#sorry i have a lot of thoughts about lucretia okay

[barry-j-blupjeans]

"And of course, you'll have training together tomorrow-"

"Can't," Magnus interrupted.

Lucretia blinked. She had come down to the boys' dorm to give them an update on their new training regime After the mess with Taako's relic- the Philosopher's Stone, it was of uttermost importance that they kept in good physical shape. She was already dreading the day she'd have to send them into Wonderland, so extra training couldn't hurt. She wanted to do that last, of course, but they were still searching for the Temporal Chalice and it was better to be safe than sorry.

But the only person in the dorm when she arrived was Magnus. Merle was, apparently, with his kids (Magnus whispered this to her like it was a secret and that Merle himself hadn't shown her the pictures he kept in his wallet). When she asked about Taako, Magnus grimaced and wouldn't elaborate. Lucretia had the feeling it had something to do with the giant burn mark on their floor that had been covered with a towel much too small.

"You... can't," Lucretia repeated.

"Yeah," Magnus said. "I mean, I can! And Merle probably can! But Taako, uhhh, Taako doesn't really wanna... be... around me right now."

Okay. Okay, Lucretia could deal with this. Taako got upset over lots of stupid things. One time, he held a grudge against Magnus for three cycles for taking their last bit of ketchup. Actually, Lucretia was pretty sure that if she hadn't erased that incident from their minds, Taako would still be mad about it. First things first, she needed to get to the root of the problem.

"What exactly happened between you and Taako?" she asked.

Magnus grimaced again, twisting his face up so much that Lucretia almost laughed. But that wouldn't be professional. She was professional.

"Nothing much," Magnus blatantly lied. "It's just, uh, y'know. When you're living in such close quarters with someone for a while, you're gonna fight occasionally."

Oh, did Lucretia know.

"But what was the fight about?" she said.

"Oh y'know..." Magnus repeated. Was he sweating? He looked like he was sweating. "Sometimes you just, uhm. Do things accidentally. And then fuck up your friendship with someone."

"Did you..." Lucretia's nose scrunched up as she thought. Okay, now she was grimacing. "I'm asking this in a professional sense, but did you kiss Taako?"

"What?" Magnus said. "No! What the fuck!"

"See, I thought you hadn't but the way you phrased it-"

"No!" Magnus said. "No, I'm mar- I'm not interested in Taako. Also, T-B-H, Director, Taako is not my type. He's too... spindly. And also intimidating. In the bad way."

"Sure," Lucretia said, like that made any sense to her whatsoever. "So you didn't kiss Taako, but you did something to fuck up your friendship." She tried to think. What could Magnus have possibly done to ruin things bad enough that he thought Taako wouldn't be going to training. "Did you... damn, Magnus, I'm out of ideas."

"I don't think it was that bad," Magnus said. "I just- I like to keep people on their feet! Keep them ready for danger!"

"Of course," Lucretia said, remembering when all four incidents of when she threw her journal at him when he snuck up at her, and the one time she hit him on the head with a inflatable baseball bat.

"So I was gonna do that to Taako while he was laying on the couch," Magnus said. "I think he was sleeping but I'm not sure 'cus I didn't look that hard. But I like, launched myself over the couch and onto the cushion next to him. And, uhm. Something cracked? Snapped? Snapped is a better word."

He glanced over at the burnt part of the floor. The pieces clicked together in Lucretia's mind.

"Oh, shit," she said. "You broke the umbrastaff."

"Not on purpose," Magnus said, voice low and urgent like someone would be listening in on them. Maybe he had been hanging out with Angus too much. "It just- it happened! On accident! And of course, Taako woke up immediately and he was like "what the fuck" but then the staff kind of, uhm. Got really hot? Like burning hot. And obviously, I got off it and there was a... thing that happened. And now we're here."

"A thing," Lucretia repeated, trying to get her voice to stay steady. She tightened her grip on her staff, hoping it would make her less shaky.

"Yeah, uhm, a thing."

"I think it'd be pretty important to mention what the thing was, Magnus."

"Wellllllll, I didn't get a good look at it," Magnus said, now looking anywhere but at her. He was playing with the end of his shirt. Lucretia didn't even have to know him for a hundred years to know that he wasn't telling the complete truth.

"Magnus, if it puts our security at risk-"

"Ehhhh," Magnus said. "It's probably not that big of a deal."

"Magnus."

"If I had to choose someone I have met to say it looks like," Magnus said. "Like, hypothetically, if I had to pick someone. Then I would probably, maybe- just like, a little bit, just a little bit, I would pick the, uh.... the Red Robe?"

"Lup," Lucretia breathed. Had she been in the umbrastaff this whole time? Fuck, why had Lucretia not put that together earlier? She knew the staff ate defeated magic users, Lup must have been bested before she died. Probably while hiding the Gauntlet. She hadn't come back because she hadn't physically been able to. Of course. Of course! Lucretia felt so stupid.

"Who?" Magnus asked.

"Nothing," Lucretia said, straightening up. "Where is she now? The- the Red Robe you saw, I mean."

"She got yeeted out of here pretty fast," Magnus said. "Like, there was a second where she was just kinda standing in the middle of the room, and then she was like "Taako!" and then she kinda fell through the floor and got shot away from the base. Taako looked through the floor window. And then he kinda like, stared at me. And he did that thing where he doesn't say anything but you know he's upset at you-"

"Right, right," Lucretia said, distracted. She had lich wards, duh. But that means Barry might find Lup before Lucretia was able and- gods, Lucretia was only just managing the guilt of Barry knowing what she was doing, but Lup?? Fuck. "Magnus I have to- I gotta go. This is- this is serious. If you see the Red Robe- either of them, if you see either Red Robe, tell me immediately. Do you understand?"

"Oh, for sure," Magnus said, still not looking at her. Lucretia, frankly, didn't care. She turned from the room, speed walking back towards the elevator. And then she remembered why she had come down here in the first place.

"I want the three of you in the gym at nine tomorrow morning!" she called over her shoulder. "No exceptions!"

"Taako's probably not gonna come!" Magnus said.

"No exceptions!" Lucretia repeated.

"He doesn't have a weapon anymore!"

"No exceptions!" Lucretia said once more, jamming the button to open the elevator. She heard Magnus grumble something from behind her, but she kept pressing the button. The sooner she got back to her office, the sooner she could do a scrying spell, and the sooner she could finally find Lup.

#magnus burnsides #lucretia #taz #taz balance #the adventure zone #mine #ise cube writing #long post #kinda #like 1.2k

[lillianabluejeans]

Turns out i already had the perfect ficlet for today's prompt! It's a little old, but I still like it. This is set in 8th bird lilli au, the morning after crystal kingdom.

@taznovembercelebration Jewellery or blanket

-

Snow crunches pleasantly underfoot as Lucretia walks up to Lilliana's house. It's a nice place in a tucked away corner of Neverwinter with lots of yard space. It's almost like a cottage. She reaches the door and stands there for a moment. She needs to just drop the box and vanish, but she gives herself a moment to think about what it would be like to knock and be invited in. Sit around all together and have brunch and cake and shower her with gifts and love. 

She shakes the image away, and before she can move to put the box down, the door swings open. 

The woman in the door, Lilli's wife Aleena, looks at her with mild confusion. "Can I help you?" 

Lucretia wills away her deer-in-headlights shock and says, "I'm sorry, I- I came to deliver this," she lifts the box, "it's a birthday gift for Lilliana." 

Aleena looks over the package, and Lucretia sees her eyes skip over the bureau logo on it. She lifts her eyes and takes Lucretia in with more scrutiny than she did initially. Her neutral expression sinks and settles into cold displeasure. Her spine straightens and she crosses her arms. "I take it you're the director, then."

"Um," there's no point in lying, Lilliana must have described her, "yes. Typically I would just wait until she came back on base, but I feel bad for interrupting her break last night with our, ah, predicament." 

"So you decided to interrupt again."

Lucretia fumbles for a response, "I- uh- sorry. I'm only here to give her this." 

Aleena's frown deepens. "She's still sleeping." 

Lucretia may not be the most socially adept person in the world, but she gets the distinct feeling that this woman doesn't like her. 

"That's fine!" She holds the box out to her, "you can take it. I don't want to be a bother." 

Aleena takes it, feels the weight for a moment. "What is it?" 

"A blanket," she's just wishing for this interaction to end. She may be the leader of a secret organization, but Aleena's glare cuts straight through her. "I noticed she doesn't like the cold. I thought it'd be fitting." Her half sun elf genes plus that one time they lost her to a frozen climate turned her into a gremlin for warmth. The blanket is a nice hand-crafted one Barry got her on a particularly cold cycle. 

Aleena tucks the box under her arm. "Okay. Is that all?" 

Lucretia can see when she's not wanted. "Yes. Sorry again for interrupting." 

Aleena says, "sure," and closes the door in her face. The click of the lock feels very pointed. 

Lucretia wills her racing heart to relax as she makes her way back down the front path. She's glad that Lilli found the tall protective wife of her dreams, but fantasy jesus is she scary. The way Aleena glared at her, she would almost worry that she knew something she shouldn't about the redaction, but her eyes skipped over the bureau logo, exactly the way they should've.

#taz fic #blupjeans baby #taz au #taz lucretia #aleena isnt even part of the bureau but she knows that this whole business is more trouble than it's worth #but it's important to lilli that she see this through so aleena's supportive

[kravkalackin]

He needed to leave. Taako knew he needed to leave, but he didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know where to go, or how he got here, or fucking anything. His brain felt like it was burned up scrambled eggs as all his thoughts dissolved into static and he couldn’t stop fucking crying. 

He needed to go before someone found him. He could swear it hadn’t been his fault. The guy had been begging him. That wouldn’t hold up though, who kills someone just like that, just because they asked? Without any sort of explanation. He didn’t even know his name, or how they got here or why he’d been so insistent on needing to die in the first place. 

All he could remember was screaming, and static, and a panic mixed with overwhelming certainty that whoever this was needed to die and they couldn’t afford to wait any longer. 

So now here he was, on the deck of... something, kneeling in front of a corpse he’d barely managed to grab and pull back before he’d tumbled over the edge. 

His mind was so overwhelmed that he didn’t notice the red energy surrounding the body at first, not until it was mostly risen up into a bright specter. Bolts of arcane power were splintering off of him, and again Taako’s mind told him to run. His legs wouldn’t fucking work though, and after a moment the ghost seemed to relax. 

“Okay, okay. I remember. I can remember now, it’s gonna be- aw geeze,” it said, which didn’t really make a lot of sense, but Taako could understand that reaction to the whole situation here. “Okay, Taako- Taako just... forget about all that,” he continued, moving away from the corpse some. “Do you remember me bud?” he asked, caution and fear obvious from the voice if from nothing else. 

“C-can’t say I do,” he managed, and oh boy did he not appreciate how his voice sounded right now. He’d have to get a handle on that pronto. That apparently wasn’t the answer the ghost was hoping for, its whole form slumping. 

“Okay that- that’s bad. It wasn’t just L̶̢̡͟͠ú̴̸̕p͢͞. Fuck, how much was erased? Taako, I promise, we’re gonna fix-” 

The ghost stopped suddenly, which was probably the only thing that could distract Taako from whatever the fuck that noise it had made was. It didn’t so much have a face, but somehow Taako could still tell that it was looking past him. Turning around there was a woman standing in a doorway. She was as familiar as this ghost or the corpse on the ground, which was to say not at all. 

“Oh... gods,” the woman said, a hand over her mouth and tears already in her eyes. Maybe she was friends with the dead guy. Maybe she was afraid of ghosts. Fuck if Taako knew. 

“Lucretia, I know you’re immune to F̶́͠i͜͜s̶he̡̕ŕ͘'͝ş͞ ̢̛ef̧̛͡f̸̛́e̡c͢t̨s̸̛̛ too. Something happened, something bad. We forgot L̶̢̡͟͠ú̴̸̕p͢͞, Taako doesn’t know who I am. We have to figure out a way to reverse this immediately,” the ghost said, and there were more than a few parts that were lost on his ears, but the red specter had gotten between him and this woman now. He didn’t get the feeling that it wanted to hurt her though, even if she slowly started shaking her head. 

“I’m- I’m so sorry Barry. I promise, I have a solution that is going to fix everything. This is just going to be for a little while. You were never supposed to know,” she said. 

There was a silence in the air then. Wind was passing by, a lot of wind honestly, but the cloak that made of the ghost’s form didn’t move an inch. Taako might not have enough brain power to spell his own name if someone asked him to right at that moment, but even he could tell that this was... this was bad. 

“You erased her?” he asked, his voice so quiet Taako almost couldn’t hear it over the wind. Why was there so much wind where were they? 

“I didn- that wasn’t the point. I didn’t want to, but it’s- everything needed to go so that we can start over. So that we can fix it!” the woman insisted, but the ghost was already backing away from her. Despite being a faceless, amorphous shroud of darkness, Taako got the distinct feeling that it was scared. 

“I’ll be back. I’m going to fix this and then we’ll be back,” it said, and Taako hadn’t realized he’d grabbed his shoulder until icy cold points felt like they were digging into his flesh.  

“Wait!” the woman shouted, but that didn’t stop the ghost, sending out a swirl of arcane power and suddenly the scene around them changed. Suddenly they were somewhere else, a forest from the looks of it. Almost as suddenly Taako could feel his mind starting to work a little bit better, that coating of electric wire lessening the slightest bit. 

“So um, I’m pretty lost here,” Taako said after what felt like an agonizingly long time of just sitting there with a ghost. He nodded, its form shuddering slightly before turning towards him. 

“I know, I know how fucking confused and freaked out you must be right now, and I can’t- I can’t explain it all to you, but I promise I will fix this. I just need you to trust me,” he said, and Taako supposed he could argue. He could try to run or just go along with it for now and then dip the first chance he got. 

But the one thing he could remember was someone with the same voice as this ghost begging him to kill him, and doing it with no hesitation because he trusted that voice. 

“Yeah, alright then. Lead the way.”

#taz #the adventure zone #taako #barry bluejeans #lucretia #fun fact: this was also how i started red blue colorblind #but decided to go with glamour springs instead #still really enjoy this concept tho

[lilblog-asatreat]

15 and Barry!

15. paying attention when they are talking about their passions

Still taking prompts from this prompt list!

Barry is a man with a lot of patience. He has to be, especially now that he's on a seemingly impossible mission to save all of existence with studying the Light of Creation being one of the only ways to figure out a way to stop the Hunger once and for all. A job that is also nearly impossible for the simple fact that, more often than not, even when they do happen to find the Light early on in a cycle, it's usually with people who won't give them access to it until they've proven themselves worthy by the end of the year. A few weeks, at best, every two to three cycles is not enough time to get any meaningful information from it.

This is why Merle being taught the ability of Parlay was such an exciting breakthrough. Getting a direct line to the Hunger has got to be the biggest and best accomplishment they've ever had. His frusteration with not getting the Light in Tesseralia until the end of the cycle had evaporated completely with this news... until Merle came back the next cycle with no information whatsoever.

It was only the first meeting though. It established that communication was possible, that there was someone who Merle could communicate with which is big in and of itself, and Merle was eager enough to jump right back in after telling everyone what happened.

It sucked that Merle died again after less than fifteen minutes, but he did come back with news that he got something from John even if it was obvious and really broad with a dash of confusion on the part of everyone on the Starblaster. What does growing larger than the limitations placed on living things even mean? How do you overtake the creator of limitations?

Barry isn't too thrilled the Hunger is getting information on them too, but that is how conversations work. He has to be patient.

He reminds himself of this as he listens to the end of Merle's third report: in exchange of giving them in detail specs of the ship, they got... John's previous occupation and the fact that the Hunger contains multitudes, much of which he and his family have already seen as he added more planes to his mass.

"Hey- hey, Merle? Just as like a tactician I guess am I- am I the tactical officer?" Magnus asks.

"Yeah, you're proficient in that," Merle agrees.

"Yeah yeah yeah, maybe stop giving him so much tactical information about, you know, our ship and how we escape him every time? Just aaaaa suggestion?" Magnus says, crossing his arms. "We're learning a lot about him esoterically, but not like... weaknesses, strengths, fighting... uhhh"

"Okay, I'll just say, 'how do I kill you, John'. I'll just ask that next time, smartass." Merle says heatedly with his hands on his hips.

"That's what he's asking you!" Magnus exclaims exasperatedly.

"No he's not! He's-"

"His first question was how do you come back to life! That's how do I kill you for good, Merle!"

"I don't know!"

"Okay, guys? We can't fight over this, alright?" Davenport says as he pinches the bridge of his nose. "Merle, Magnus has a point. Next time he asks you something like that, can you please be a little more vague in your answer? It's fine if you have to give him an answer to get him to continue talking to you, but we can't afford to have you tell him everything about us."

Merle slumps his shoulders. "Yes, Captain."

Lucretia closes the notebook she was writing in and tucks it underneath her arm. "Are you ready to go back, Merle? We could use any more information you can get out of him."

Merle shakes his head. "I'm uh, I'm actually going to take a break this cycle. Dying sucks, and I haven't tended to my plants in three years. They're probably all dead by now, but I can replace them with whatever plants this next planet has to offer, I guess."

"That's fair," Lup says. "Not gonna lie, it's been weird not seeing you at the dining table for three years in a row. I'm kind of glad you're sticking around this time."

Merle smiles, and opens his mouth to say something, but Taako cuts him off.

"Yeah, you know you don't have to go talk to him at the beginning of the cycle, right? Especially if you dying is going to uh... become a thing? Like, you can just wait until we're all about to leave anyway, my dude."

"I don't know, I kind of like getting it out of the way," Merle says with a shrug. "But I would rather spend time with you all, so we'll see."

Everyone disperses after that. Barry watches Merle walk down the stairs to head back to his quarters before he remembers that he needed to talk to him about something really important now that he's going to be back with them for the year. He runs to the top of the stairs and calls out, "Merle, wait! I need to tell you something!"

Merle pops his head back around the stairwell to look up at him. "Is it about John?"

Barry shakes his head. "It's about... well... it's about your plants." He starts feeling jittery as he walks down the steps. Is Merle going to be mad he went into his room everyday for the past three years?

"Okay? What about them, Bar?"

He stops in front of Merle and starts to fidget with his hands. It's been over thirty-three years since he's met him. He knows he's probably not going to mind, but he's still getting needlessly stressed about this.

Maybe he needs to increase his dose of anxiety meds.

"Um... so since I knew you weren't going to be back to take care of them for a while, I kind of... um... I started taking care of them for you? I'm sorry if it wasn't cool of me to go in your room. I promise I didn't touch or move anything except the plants, but I remembered the routines you were telling me about that you have on how you take care of them, and I thought I'd give it a shot? I managed not to kill any of them which I'm sure you'd be glad to hear, but the marigolds from cycle 25 came close. Also, last cycle I found a seller who had bags of plant food that was similar to the stuff you brought from home, and the few plants you still have from home loved it! I have some extra bags of it in my room for you, so it should last a while. Oh, and I know you said you've always wanted to get a philodendron pink princess, and I found one back in cycle 31, so I got that for you, and- hey, are you okay?" Barry looks at Merle with concern as his eyes start to tear up.

"Yeah, I'm good, I just... I didn't think anyone actually listened to me when I talked about my plants. Thank you."

Barry kneels down to let Merle in for a hug. "Of course I listened. I know it's important to you, and after looking after them for the past few years, I kind of get it. I'm still not the biggest fan of dirt, but it was really cool to watch them grow and know I was helping to make that happen."

Merle laughs and pulls away from the hug. "It's really cool, isn't it? It's really something special. I know not everyone can be a fan of dirt though, so thank you. Really. That really means a lot that you did this for me."

Barry smiles and stands up, feeling the anxiety leave him completely. "Of course. Now go get some rest. You've earned it."

Merle smiles and nods. "You too, Bluejeans. See ya at around dinner time?"

"You bet!"

#thank you for the ask!!! #taz #taz balance #taz fanfic #barry bluejeans #merle highchurch #ipre #a gift from Gab #written works of Gab

[raineydaywrites]

"You're still mad that we didn't listen to your plan, aren't you?" Taako asked, with a sneer, and Lucretia knew that he was being cruel because of this place, the way that it amped up their aggression, and she needed to keep it under control-

But, well. Taako wasn't the only one being pumped with aggression-inducing drugs.

"Of course I'm mad at you! All of you! Look at what you did!" Lucretia burst, an anger she'd never allowed herself to express before today. "We killed- so many people! And for what? It didn't even work! We tried it for two years and it did nothing! And my plan didn't interfere with it until I reunited the first few relics, so actually, we tried it for over a decade and it didn't do shit! All it did was make the Hunger desperate and angry and get it to consume the only part of it we could actually communicate with!"

She sobbed, the guilt still overwhelming after all these years. "We said we wouldn't sacrifice innocents to stop it. And then we did anyway. What, we just got too tired to think of anything better? All those people- so much of Faerun just- gone because of what we did! What I did! Because you all would rather commit genocide than even consider that my ideas have merit!"

"The barrier plan wasn't ever going to fucking work Lucretia!" Taako screamed back at her.

"I know! I fucking know that, do you seriously still think I'm that stupid?" Lucretia shrieked it, unable to control her own volume anymore. "It would have hurt people, but so would the relics plan! At least the barrier would be quicker, instead of letting the pain and death drag on and on and on forever!"

"It wouldn't have though! It would still have been a slow death, everything falling to pieces, but it would have killed everyone! At least some people survived the Relics!"

"They almost didn't! Those fucking things could have ruined the world so many times. Don't you get that? Your fucking Stone came pretty close, you know! Wasn't the closest though. You three talked a lot of shit about how the Bureau didn't get any of the Relics before you came, but that was mostly because we were so focused on just mitigating the damage! I spend a decade cleaning up your godsdamn mess before it got the chance to kill everyone, and whether or not my original plan would even work isn't the fucking point! The point is that what we did was wrong, and none of you were doing a thing about it!"

"You were 'cleaning up our mess?'" Taako asked, incredulous and dangerous. "You took that on yourself when you wiped our memories! We coulda done that ourselves if we'd've remembered!"

"Could have. But you wouldn't have. Because nobody but me and Lup bothered to pay a damn bit of attention to what our fuck-up was doing to the world."

"We knew what was happening! Of course we paid attention! You and Lup aren't the only 'decent' people in the family, get off your damn high horse. You're just still mad that we wouldn't do your plan, even though it was stupid, and you can't get over yourself enough to even admit it!"

"That's not true!" Lucretia felt her voice going high-pitched enough that she worried she'd just start screeching unintelligibly. "I'm not that fucking arrogant."

"Then why the fuck are you talking about how 'we didn't listen to you,' huh? You think you know best but you don't! You thought it was the right thing to do, I get it, whatever, but you're wrong!"

"Pot, meet kettle! What the fuck was the Relics plan if not you thinking you knew best and being wrong?"

"Okay, yeah, I'm a hypocrite, who gives a shit? At least I can admit that, you're still trying to act like you really did that shit for everyone else. But if that's true, stop dodging the fucking question!”

"Okay! Yes, I'm mad you never considered my plan. You know why?" Lucretia kept talking before Taako could interrupt with some stupid sense of victory. "Because as soon as you actually started to consider my barrier plan for two godsdamn minutes, you figured out the plan that actually got us the win! You came up with the plan to stop the Hunger, and I'm not dismissing that it was your good idea, but you only figured it out because you started to think about the application of my plan! Gods, if you'd done that years ago, we could have solved this mess before we decided that mass murder was a viable option- either Lup and Barry or me. None of us fucking listened to each other, and because of that- because of that, we have the blood of thousands of innocents on our hands. Like, fucking pardon me, but I think that's a justifiable thing to be angry about!"

"Stop it! Stop acting like you have the moral high-ground here! Stop telling me shit I already know! We should have talked, no shit, but you can't act like you're blameless in that! You don't get to be angry about that after what you did!"

"So you get to be angry and I have to shut up and take it, huh?" Lucretia scoffed. She wanted to hit him so bad. "You're allowed to hate me forever, to never forgive me, to think the worst of me and sit on your fucking high horse that you did the good and moral thing of refusing to admit that you fucked up or ever even try to alleviate the suffering you caused, and I'm supposed to feel like a monster? To flagellate myself with guilt and beg your damn forgiveness that I tried- and succeeded- to help people and in the process I hurt your feelings?"

"Don't you ever fucking dismiss Lup like that again, or I'll fucking kill you!" Taako shrieked, quickly reaching out of control levels of anger, and Lucretia felt a momentary flash of guilt over going too far, but it didn't dampen the rage enough to make her stop.

"I'm sorry," Lucretia ground out, past teeth that didn't want to apologize. "For... that. It was too far. And you know that I'm sorry for hurting you. But I'm not going to sit here and beg you to get past my betrayal when you refuse to even admit that we all betrayed each other. When you betrayed me first! I betrayed myself, my morals, to help you guys with your plan because I love you, and it was wrong! I want-" The rage was doing what it always did, turning to crushing sadness and she couldn't stand it, but she also couldn't stop it, tears welling up in her eyes despite herself- "I want to forgive you- to love you again, but- look at the kinds of shit we were willing to do for each other. Maybe the world is better off if we can't stand each other."

Lucretia could see Taako gearing up to say something else, but she wasn't planning to stick around to listen to it. She turned and ran away from him, ignoring the way he called her name furiously behind her.

#taz balance #taako adventurezone #lucretia adventurezone #taako taaco #taz lucretia #my writing #part of a longer thing eventually

[ceilingfan5]

taakitz fake dating+bodyguard+proposal :))))

“I don’t want a bodyguard! I want to go places on my own! I want to have some fucking freedom again! What’s the point of being rich if I can’t be in charge of myself??” Taako’s horrible mood seems to radiate off of him, threatening to kill the houseplants. 

“You know that just isn’t possible,” Lucretia sighs. “I’ve been your manager and done your PR for a long time now, Taako, and we both know-”

“Augh!” Taako pops a piece of gum in his mouth and chews angrily, loudly snapping it like he’s imagining sinking his teeth into any stray fingers that might dare approach him. “Don’t tell me that ‘we both know’ speech again! I’ve heard it! I get it! I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid.”

“Taako, you aren’t-”

Taako very nearly growls at her. Kravitz clears his throat. 

“Ah, yes,” Lucretia says, almost another sigh. “You know Kravitz. He’s got an excellent resume, he’s been your bodyguard before. How about today, you two go solo? Rather than a whole team?”

It’s a compromise. Taako hates compromises. But he wants out of the fucking house, so he complies. 

“Sure. Fine. Whatever. But you have to keep up with me.” He glares at Kravitz, in his nice black suit, with his rippling muscles and nonplussed expression and high cheekbones and gold in his hair, which is just gorgeous. He’d be sexy even if he couldn’t bench press three Taakos. Taako pops his gum again, thinking. “And I’ve got a plan.”

“Oh dear,” Lucretia says. 

“Whatever it takes,” Kravitz says, looking and sounding very professional. Taako’s going to fix that. If he can’t have some alone time, he’s going to cause mischief until they wish he was alone. He spits his gum into the nearest plant. 

“Let’s go. I’m driving.”

“You are not-” Lucretia’s voice gets a little more tense. “You don’t have a valid license!”

“I’ll drive you,” Kravitz says, still cool as a cucumber popsicle. Taako rolls his eyes. 

At least Kravitz drives fast. 

“So here’s my plan,” Taako says, gesturing dramatically. 

“I’m listening.” Kravitz passes another car that seems like it’s standing still. Excellent. 

“You’re not my bodyguard today. You’re gonna be my boyfriend.”

“I’m sorry?” 

“Keep up, big guy. You’re going to be my boyfriend. We’re dating. Hot new goss. Delicious and fresh. Everybody will want to know the tasty celebrity deets.” He smacks his fist into his palm, getting excited. And then the paparazzi will swarm, and Taako will be able to slip out of the crowd and run off. It’s perfect. 

“I take it you’re going to insist on this.”

“I sure am.”

“Then, I suppose we’re boyfriends,” Kravitz intones, deadpan. “Yay.”

Taako snickers. 

It’s harder to lose Kravitz than he thought. The dating made for a lot of attention, but it also gave Kravitz an excuse to literally hold him by the arm when the cameras got close. So what if Taako’s heart beat faster when Kravitz slipped them out of the hot zone, running three blocks half-carrying him in the process? So what if they share a hot dog and an indirect kiss? The suit is a little conspicuous, so Taako makes Kravitz wear a shiny purple shawl he finds in a second hand shop. Taako shouldn’t even be going into second hand shops. That makes it great. The look on Kravitz’s face? Greater. 

He tries to slip away again after lunch, but the mustard incident barely phases Kravitz, and neither does the old bathroom trick. Kravitz is stuck to him like glue. 

“Taako! Who’s your new boyfriend??” People with expensive cameras call. And, okay, maybe it’s fun to bask in it. It’s been a while since he had someone on his arm, and that last someone wasn’t half as fine as Kravitz. It’s almost...nice. He thinks less about slipping away and more about wiping that blank look off Kravitz’s face. And he knows just what will do the trick, too. 

Sorry, Lucy. Here comes a PR disaster. 

They slip into a jewelry shop, and Taako buys several things, quite sneaky like, while Kravitz, bored, admires the security cameras. Taako suggests they go for ice cream as they step out into the sunshine, and within minutes, they’re swarmed by paps again. Perfect. 

“Hey Krav,” Taako says, sweet as butter. 

“Hm?” Kravitz looks at him. Taako splits into a dangerous grin, and then he gets down on one knee. 

Kravitz blinks. 

“What are you doing?”

“Tying my shoe,” Taako quips, sliding around in his designer flip-flops. “What does it look like?”

Kravitz squints at him.

“Everybody, gather round!” 

“Taako, no.” 

“Kravitz,” Taako grins so hard his teeth are going to fall out, and he’s going to step on one, and it’s going to hurt, but God, will it be worth it. “I love you so much.”

Kravitz’s jaw drops. His eyes are full of confusion, embarrassment, intrigue. They almost sparkle. 

“You make every day of my life so happy.” Taako pulls out the little ring box. Kravitz covers his mouth. “Will you make my day, and every day after that? Be with me forever.” 

“I,” Kravitz stumbles. He looks around at the paparazzi, who are very much swarming. “Don’t know what to say.” His voice is a weird kind of tense, and Taako pushes it as far as it will go.

“Say yes, baby. Be mine.” And he tilts his head and gives Kravitz the smoulder that got him into a dozen blockbuster films. Several passsersby swoon. 

Kravitz is making a funny noise. Taako frowns a little, thinking he’s choking at first, but Krav’s hand can’t cover it-- he’s laughing. And he’s laughing hard. The more he tries to stop, the worse it gets, and he doubles over, coughing, spluttering, giggling, wheezing. It’s a beautiful show, but Taako’s embarrassed. 

“Well?” he demands. He’s invested now, even if it is fake. Kravitz gets the hint and tries to stop laughing, but his smile is warbly and barely keeping the snickers in. He bends down and pulls Taako up and kisses him, for real, on the mouth and everything, and Taako forgets the ruse for a minute and really kisses back, swooning just like the gawking commonfolk. 

“Of course I will,” Kravitz says nice and loud, and then he leans in and whispers in Taako’s ear, “How are you going to slip out of this one, hm?”

Taako flushes brightly. So maybe Kravitz was a more challenging opponent than he thought. Two can play at this tango. 

“He said yes!” Taako declares, and the crowd cheers. In an instant, Taako’s phone is buzzing so hard he could fry an egg on it. 

“She found out,” he says out of the side of his mouth. 

“She always does.” Kravitz smiles-- really, despite the rest of it, he’s so glad he got to see that gorgeous smile--and he kisses Taako again, once for the tabloids and once more to let him know he’s really fucked it up this time. 

#taakitz #taakitz fic #taz #tazb #the adventure zone #the adventure zone balance #fan5fics #ask games #i love this shit

[comradelup]

50 general with Taako and Lucretia!

50. “every time i think i’m close to finally figuring you out you end up surprising me.”

my botw au is constantly living in my head rent free so i thought i’d write some of that :0 for context, taako is link and lucretia is impa but a bit more fleshed out/involved with the champions

Taako marches decisively through the little village, up the tall set of stairs, and through the door to Lucretia’s house.

She’s at her desk on the opposite side of the room, as she nearly always is. Papers are neatly placed about and she’s reading one in particular. Beside her desk, the Bulwark Staff stands upright on its own, occasionally pulsing out a near transparent wave of magic.

Lucretia looks up at Taako’s entrance, and a smile that is one part joy and one part relief spreads across her face. “How did it go?”

He crosses the room and— on top of her papers— places the Temporal Chalice. “How do you think it went?”

She looks pleasantly surprised as she observes the cup, and Taako doesn’t really get why. It’s not like he hasn’t already gotten two other relics. Hell, he’s even wearing the Gaia Sash right now. And the Oculus is around his neck!

Lucretia shakes her head fondly and looks back to Taako. “Every time I think I’m close to finally figuring you out you end up surprising me.”

Taako shrugs, taking back the cup. As he attaches it to a loop on his belt, he says, “Heroes of Faerun have to be mysterious somehow.”

She chuckles. “You’ve always been an enigma.”

“As I should,” he says. “Oh! I almost forgot!”

“Hm?”

“Magnus says hi.” He says it dismissively, even if it’s possibly the most important message he’s carried; but isn’t that appropriate? He doesn’t wanna make a whole big deal of this. He sits nonchalantly on her desk, crossing his ankles. Suddenly, the dirt under his fingernails is the most interesting thing in the room.

Lucretia is silent for a beat. “How was he?”

“He’s fine,” Taako says and, fuck, his voice is all emotional and shit now. “besides the ‘spirit trapped by an apocalyptic monster’ part, obviously. He said that he knows you probably blame yourself but you shouldn’t. Either way, he forgives you.”

Wow! Heroes of Faerun shouldn’t have dirt under their fingernails! That’s just plain unheroic. He better get to cleaning that up.

“…He does?” Lucretia asks. Taako nods, not looking up from his now squeaky clean nails.

Lucretia sighs, and he knows her well enough to know her head is in her hands, elbows propped up on the desk. It’s weird, he doesn’t remember seeing her do this, but he doesn’t feel as though it’s a new thing. Magical memory loss is weird.

“I think they all do,” Taako says, dropping his hands into his lap. “They weren’t upset when they saw me. They were just… sorry.” He forces a small chuckle. “How’d I get surrounded by such do-gooders?”

Lucretia sighs again, heavier. Her voice wobbles as she says, “They don’t deserve this.”

“No shit,” Taako says, pulling his legs into a criss-crossed position and turning to face her. Papers get crumbled and quills fall off the desk, but neither of them seem to care. Taako sure doesn’t. “This is The Hunger’s fault. Not yours.”

Lucretia curls her fingers into her palms, staring up at him. “I couldn’t protect you.”

“Bullshit,” Taako responds immediately. None of that self deprecating bullshit while he’s around. “I’m still here. Lup’s out there. The rest of them are in the Beasts.”

“They’re dead. Lup’s fighting off the apocalypse on her own. You died. I was supposed to protect all of you.” Lucretia gestures to the Bulwark Staff. It’s currently projecting a large field around the tiny village of Phandalin, keeping it safe from anything that would do the IPRE harm. She hasn’t taken it down in one hundred years.

They all have their scars. Taako supposes not all of them are physical.

He takes a deep breath, composing himself. If he’s gonna be sincere, he’s gonna word it right. “A lot happened. I still don’t really remember it, but I know things were crazy. You did the best you could and, yeah, it wasn’t enough. But you saved me, and you saved Phandalin. You can’t be blamed for the Blights, no one knew they would be there. Even if you did know, they forgive you. Don’t go moping around blaming yourself for something no one else blames you for. You aren’t The Hunger, you aren’t the Shadow Brethren, you didn’t do any of this. Actually, you’re the only reason I’m alive right now. If Lup had to bring me to the shrine, she wouldn’t’ve made it to the castle in time. Thanks to you, I have a chance of saving my sister. And the rest of the world, I guess.”

Taako looks down into his lap. He’a not the emotionally vulnerable type, and he’s certainly not the pep talk type. He feels awkward, and he doesn’t like feeling awkward.

Then he feels something else: arms wrapped around him. It’s clumsy, because he’s sitting and she’s reaching over a desk, but Lucretia’s pulled him into a tight hug, head buried in his shoulder.

“Thank you,” she says, voice quiet.

Okay. Um. Taako gently reciprocates the hug. “No prob, Bob.”

#taako’s not good at Emotions someone come help this poor amnesiac boy #taz #taz balance #taz fic #balance #taako #lucretia #botw au #writing #ask #anon #long post #JUST got done helping my sister with her mountain of late work so now i feel incredibly responsibility free #which means fic time >:3

[neuronary]

Angus wound up staying with Madam Director - Lucretia, she’d told him, since the Bureau of Balance wasn’t really a thing anymore - when everything was over.

It was largely unintentional at first; Angus had simply not thought beyond summoning a bubble to take him back to base and collapsing directly into bed once he was certain they’d won. But then it had been the Director - Lucretia, except he couldn’t call her that, so maybe Miss Lucretia? - to find him less than an hour later and drag him to the medical bay to get treated. Angus had tried to protest, but she had not-so-gently informed him that making sure he didn’t bleed out wasn’t a waste of any cleric’s spell slots, and kept an eagle eye while he underwent several healing spells.

---

“Get some rest, kid,” one of the clerics - a kind looking elf woman - had told him.

“Okay, ma’am,” he’d replied, before pitching sideways, directly into Madam Lucretia’s waiting arms. “Sorry,” he’d proceeded to mumble into her neck before he finally fell back to sleep.

---

Once everything had settled down a bit more, it just made sense; he and Miss-Director-Lucretia-Ma’am - he’d been flustered and half-asleep still and she had done a poor job at concealing her laughter - had a lot in common. They both preferred the quiet whirrs and shudders of their lunar home to idle conversation. They both loved pens - a fact Angus had discovered a little before the Crystal Kingdom escapade. They both read their way through small libraries worth of books in just a few months and were often eager to exchange recommendations.

---

“Analysis On Crime Scene Blood Splatters and Other Viscera,” the Director had said, smiling, on Angus’ birthday, as she handed over a slim, but ultimately informative book.

“What the actual fuck,” Killian had muttered behind them. “He’s ten.”

Despite the Tres Horny Boys’ Caleb Cleveland themed gift set - a Caleb Cleveland duck from Magnus, the latest instalment in the series from Merle, and a precisely decorated birthday cake from Taako - the book became Angus’ secret favourite. He read it many times over, always paying careful attention to the neat inscription inside the front cover:

‘Angus McDonald,

You are already the world’s greatest detective, and I am well aware that there is much information in this book that you might already be familiar with. Even so, self-improvement is something we can always strive for, and perhaps there are secrets yet to be unveiled in the world of BPA.

Have a wonderful tenth birthday, and congratulations on reaching double digits.

Yours,

Director Lucretia.’

---

They didn’t share many specific interests, but very few of their interests strayed from the umbrella terms of ‘morbid’ or ‘nerdy’, so it was easy enough to find common ground. They both sat in silence in the library or Madam Lucretia’s office, sipping tea and reading books. They both defaulted to not speaking because…

Well. Because they were both accustomed to loneliness.

---

“So what about your parents, kid?” Merle grumbled at him, about a week after the Day.

Angus took another slow spoonful of ice cream and pondered his response.

“My father lives here in Neverwinter,” he said, after a moment. It was technically true. His birth father had survived the Day and remained in Neverwinter, safe and sound. Angus didn’t need to mention that they hadn’t ever actually spoken to one another.

---

Madam Lucretia put on a persona just as much and just as frequently as Angus - the bright, bubbly boy detective and the infallible Director of the Bureau - that both of them sometimes wondered how much of it was still an act. (Most of it, probably. Madam Lucretia managed to be terrifying and the planar system’s biggest softie all in one.) They both knew how to play up to those personas to get what they wanted, and they relished equally in letting them go.

---

“That’s not what Caleb Cleveland would say!”

Killian and Carey were smothering laughter behind him, but Angus was far too upset to care.

“And they’ve made it way too obvious that the killer is--”

“Woah! Spoilers, little man!”

“But it’s obvious,” Angus whined.

“Not to those of us that aren’t seasoned detectives, munchkin.”

#this is godawful but it's a warm-up so #angus mcdonald #lucretia taz #taz balance #i would give my life for these two nerds #ficlet

[jelloopy]

Moonlighting Notes

Previous: Character Creation, HtbG

Moonlighting Ch 1

Boys are dizzy upon entering moon base (Why exactly was this a thing? Like was it because Lucretia made it so the bureau couldn’t be remembered/ comprehended by anyone not inoculated?)

AAVVIIIIIIII!!!!! He is from Brandybuck and gives them some brandy to ease the dizziness (Team player, I want someone like Avi in my crew.) 

JOHAAANNNNNN!!!! Half elf! v v sad boy. So talented!!! (I kinda forgot how mopey he was since I’ve been catching up with the rest of TAZ )

Magnus why you tickling a grown-ass man? (This is so funny and weird considering how their relationship grows later on?)

Best god damn musician that ever existed. Plays violin like a mad man (He plays the Violin… I feel like Lup would have challenged him so god damn fast. But still, is he the legit best Violinist in Faerune?)

Magnus drinks the Ichor first. Remembers everything that was static before now being clear as day. Months and years ago there was a war that ruined and killed entire towns, loved ones, and people he knew. (Juliaaaaaa! God that sucks realizing that tbh. But also later on Travis says that Magnus was the leader of a Militia going against Governor Kalen. So what was that about exactly? They might actually explain that later on so I gonna wait and see.)

”You have never seen anything like this”~griffin about Fisher (Oh, how incorrect that statement is. Especially for it to be Magnus he’s talking about.)

Taako drinks next then Merle (Ahh, Taako the trust issues are showinggggg! But I don’t blame you it’s okay you have full right to be sus)

Taako has a memory of working on his grandpa’s farm where he leaves the milk out too long and remembers sour cream (he was 65yrs old) (God, does that mean Lup was there too? )

Johann came up with the name “voidfish”? (To be fair the IPRE gang only called him Fisher so it actually is pretty neat if Johann really was the guy to come up with the name.)

Magic Brian was 121yrs old and a drow elf (A young man just looking for mischief)

Magnus tries to tickle Johann again bit he smacks his hand away (YES JOHANN Stand up for your self!!!!! What a king.)

Johann is in the “gamekeeping” department? (I mean he is the guy that feeds and takes care of Fisher by means of feeding him information that needs getting rid of. So it kinda makes sense.)

Moonlighting Ch 2

They meet Lucretia!  (I want to punch her so bad. I’m sorry if yall like Lucretia but she infuriates me. She actually is a really cool character with a complex personality that I can actually appreciate but I still hate what she did and I will go much deeper into it later on.)

Griffin makes a joke about having to “create a new monster that takes away memories” so that he can get Taako to unlearn some of the components to making a taco (Good god. That came back to bite us in the ass didn’t it? Huh, JUNIOR. Didn’t it? That hurts a lot too.)

Lucretia doesn’t know” what the umbrastaff is (I saw a post with some Lucretia angst which I can appreciate because she could have been “in denial” about it being Lup’s umbrastaff but I got angry nonetheless.)

She believes that they are much more capable than they believe that they are (YEAH HUH? Its almost like they have less faith in themselves because someone took away their memories and the knowledge of their powers or something and they had to start all over. Wild.)

The Bureau of Balance has only been in operation for less than a year and they were not able to do anything until they discovered the Voidfish (More like Lucretia had only then figured out the logistics of her organization enough to introduce Fisher to everyone. Which in retrospect is very smart and it’s the same thing I would do at that point in time but anyway.)

Magic Brian was a wayward seeker who worked for the bureau of balance (aHA! So technically in the Graphic Novel, he should have had a bracer on unless he used a spell to conceal it which is reasonable (I won’t hate on Carey I just remembered it and noticed he didn’t have a bracer on. it’s nothing wild))

CUE TRIAL OF INITIATION! (Ngl I forgot this was a thing because of how little attention I was paying at the beginning.)

Magnus is the strongest, Merle is the smartest, and Taako is the bravest. (In all aspects, I would have switched Taako and Merle but considering at this point Taako really was a dullard I can agree with their placements.)

The smallest ogre is blue the middle ogre is green and the big ogre is red (Awe I think Griffin used all of their fave colors to Mirror the three of em. <3)

Magnus’ first blood with ripping arms off (And so it begins. God, I love that Lil character detail in Magnus. It’s so frickin funny.)

”I thought I knew him! he’s an animal!” ~Taako (I mean in The Stolen Century he waaaas taught by a bear so… not far off there bud.)

Taako falls back and breaks his wand and in return, the umbrastaff begins to shift and wiggle in his bag until he gets it out. (It never clicked that this was the time that Griffin listed in Lup’s return in the finale. Until now… That’s so cute and so sadddddd)

Moonlighting Ch 3

Magnus got to keep the robot arm(s?) (Yay! Sadly he will give them up later on :( but it is for good reason so :) )

Lucretia came up with the name “Bureau of Balance” (Why? Like why Balance. I would name it Justice or Equity or something else but Balance doesn’t seem right in line with what they are doing.)

Lucretia treats davenport as her charge or ward (Rude. For one. It also hurts a lot more when you realize he is her superior. I hate it so much.)

”We very quickly cut your hand off take the bracer then reattach the hand so its no big deal” in reference to how they’ll get the bracers off after they find all the relics. (1- I forget how they get the bracers off in the end but did Lucretia really not plan for that?) (2- heheh *cut to Merle in three Arcs*)

The seventh relic is love “after we find the sixth item we’ll come back here” (She has the 7th in her hand actually so yeah you’re only gonna need to find six. But also it kinda was Love. The bonds they all had together helped Lucretia do what she needed in the end with the help of Taako’s idea and together they ended the Hunger’s reign over Faerune.)

”who called themselves the Red Robes- are all gone- most of them killed in the hunt for their relics- bring them back here if you find one” (Uh. Lucretia really named her family the “Red Robes” and made them sound evil because they did what they could at the time. Also they aren't “all gone” the only one(s) you don’t know their whereabouts of yet are Barry and Lup. AND YOU PUT ANTI- LICH WARDS ON THE DAMN MOON DUDE. If you really wanted to find Barry to talk then you would have not done that.)

Leon the artificer! (He is trying his best and I love him)

The umbrastaff is a magical umbrella created by the Umbrawizards “very few” of them exist (Boy HUH? Did Lup like… start a gang of wizards? Or did Lucretia feed Leon false Information?)

Taako being inept at the gashapon (My favorite thing. He is played as stupid at the time but if we consider his character, in general, knowing everything we do he is just fucking with Leon and I love him for that.)

RAILSPLITTER!!!! Phantom fist!!! Wand of switcheroo!! The X-treem teen bible and SCUTTLEBUDDY!!!! (Pay close attention! These Mousekatools will be useful later on!)

Awe Magnus got everyone the stones of far speech 

They are moving to Level 4!!!

Next: MotRPL, Lunar Interlude I,

#taz: balance #taz balance #taz spoilers #taz #the adventure zone #the zone cast #thezonecast #magnus burnsides #taz magnus #taako #taako taaco #merle highchurch #lucretia #davenport #leon the artificer #Magic brian #barry bluejeans #Lup #lup taaco #johann

[silver-wield]

FF7R: The price of strength

Siddown. Let’s talk about this because frankly I’m worried about yall’s education.

The wording of this part of the story summary is as particular as the one using “they lose Jessie right before their eyes” later during the pillar chapter to indicate that Jessie actually died, whereas “a seriously injured Biggs” didn’t.

Because word choice matters.

The title first: since I totally forgot to mention it originally and had to edit this. 

The price of strength has parallels to the price of freedom, which on the surface is a Zack reference. I can already hear the romantically motivated screaming this is proof. However, the price of strength relates to Cloud and his knowledge that he’ll degrade because that’s what president Shinra said would happen at the end of chapter 7. That’s what the title’s referring to. The price of strength is Cloud’s degradation, while also being another Zack hint at the price he paid for his and Cloud’s strength.

Back to the rest of it.

So, Aerith “ambushes” Cloud. Do...yall know what ambush means?

Okay? We good? An ambush isn’t cute. Now, put it in context of Cloud, who literally swung his sword at Biggs because he thought it was an enemy lying in wait to ambush him. It’s not a positive way to describe what Aerith did.

Cloud’s on edge when Aerith appears because he’s too used to having to fight anything that approaches him in a stealthy manner. The blocking is an OG reference to the forest dream, but the story elements are different this time. Cloud spent the day with Aerith being bossed about. He stayed because she wouldn’t tell him how to get home and as much as he hated that she was right, he would’ve gotten lost.

He hasn’t just come from the temple of the Ancients where he hurt her, gave Sephiroth the black materia or went through any of the previous location events to build up a rapport between them. He has literally just met her that day. He’s known her for around 12 hours. They’re not even friends at this point.

Aerith appears because she wants to spend more time together. It doesn’t say anything about Cloud wanting to spend more time with her. Cloud wants to go home. People keep on about it like he doesn’t wanna leave. He does. Cloud wants to go home.

So, Aerith’s sudden appearance has put him on edge. Let’s take a look at that, since we know for a fact Cloud is suffering from anxiety—or did yall miss the actual meaning of Hollow, too? 

Sounds like Cloud. He’s constantly prepping for hidden danger. He’s always five seconds away from reaching for that sword hilt. He’s always checking the area for danger. He’s also extremely irritable a lot of the time. He was way more snarky and sarcastic to Aerith than he was to Barret during chapter one and he couldn’t stand Barret in chapter one. In OG his catchphrase was “Not interested” but in Remake, he’s heard saying “Seriously?” way more often, which he says because he’s annoyed about something. Yeah, it’s cultural slang for the times because we all say it, but in Cloud’s case he says it because he’s irritated/annoyed (and it’s adorable and I love that he says it and yall better thank Wedge for that because he taught it to Cloud)

Onto more medical stuff.

Cloud has less physical symptoms of anxiety, though many of them only happen during his PTSD attacks. He’s seen sweating, trembling, looking pale, breathing hard, clutching his head and we know for a fact he has trouble sleeping.

Now we’ve got that cleared up, let’s head back to the rest of the story summary. 

As Aerith walks on ahead, it triggers the Jenova vision, and Cloud’s heart skips a beat because of the vision. We don't get to see the contents of the vision, though, so can't say for certainty what it is.

One other common symptom of anxiety is an abnormally increased heart rate, also known as heart palpitations. Heart palpitations can feel like your heart is racing, pounding, or fluttering. You may also feel as though your heart is skipping a beat.

So Cloud, in the middle of a PTSD/Jenova attack, gets a heart palpitation, which is a typical symptom of anxiety, which he suffers from. It’s not related to any romantic feelings because Cloud doesn’t have romantic feelings for Aerith here and since he’s not meta and doesn’t get echoes of OG to feel anything that OG Cloud might have felt, this is just him reacting to anxiety triggering vision of a presumed death. It’s a build up, a step along a series of events that leads to Cloud’s mental breakdown. It’s yet another moment where Sephiroth—through Jenova—is trying to goad a reaction from Cloud, but again, he’s mistimed things (like in chapter 2 when he put his hand on Aerith’s shoulder to freak Cloud out) because Cloud at this point doesn’t have feelings for Aerith. 

For anyone who isn’t clear on this, Jenova can prompt future visions. Lucretia got visions too while she was pregnant with Sephiroth. She saw meteor fall nearly 30 years before any of this.

So, why does he cry? Oh, I dunno, maybe it’s got something to do with a senseless death? Zack’s? Y’kno, his best friend? Cloud’s been conscious for five days by this point and everything in his recent past is about loss. It's possible the flash was Aerith's death, but we see all of those, so why hide this one? The last major death that affected him was Zack’s, and this moment could be where Cloud partly softens his attitude towards her on the trip through the collapsed freeway. But, that doesn’t mean he wants to hang, which is why he says no when she says to take a break. But then, she talks about her boyfriend, who she obviously still misses and is in love with and this makes Cloud feel sorry for her. He relaxes his guard. Thinks that maybe he’s been too harsh to her. He’s not gonna see her again anyway, and then the moment—literally the moment—he sees Tifa in that chocobo carriage, Aerith’s an afterthought. 

And then later on, just in case anyone thought that story summary line held any kind of meaning, we see Chocobo Sam using it, which totally undermines any kind of importance it might have held. If Chocobo Sam’s heart can skip a beat, then it’s not a big deal, even if some people held those words in a romantic context. And the fact you only get this dialogue from Sam by doing his sidequests, getting Cloud’s canon outfit—which matches Tifa’s—and actually bother going to find him to chat, shows the devs were already expecting people to latch onto this phrase as something special and hid it for everyone who actually bothers to play the game properly so they could find it and enjoy the shade. Not to mention Jessie says it, too, and Jules, so it really doesn't have much impact when everyone says it.

Annnd finally, even if people do still wanna insist, those words are literally part of the same sentence that mentions Sector 7, so even if you wanted to put romantic coding on it, Cloud’s heart is more likely to have skipped a beat anticipating getting back home to where Tifa’s waiting for him.

Basically, no matter which way you slice it, that summary isn’t about love in connection to Aerith. Hell, it’s not about love at all, but more of Cloud’s anxiety and y’kno, plot stuff. 

Not to mention Aerith is literally trying not to cry, which if I remember rightly, isn’t romantically motivated context wise. 

#slam debunk #long post #story beats #character analysis #story analysis

[barry-j-blupjeans]

maybe 3 or 11 + blupjeans for the kissing prompts? :o

11. when one stops the kiss to whisper “I’m sorry, are you sure you-” and they answer by kissing them more

(Kissing prompts here :D!)

this got,,, A LITTLE out of hand sjflsdfj. here is OVER 2k of blupjeans for ur reading pleasure (probably to be posted on ao3 later)

--

Barry’s got one arm covering Lup as he’s half leaning over her, and the other up in the air to create a shield around them (god, he was so glad that Lucretia had talked him into learning abjuration magic a few cycles ago). It wasn’t the strongest, but it held up as the mineshaft they were in caved in around them. By the time the ground stopped shaking, and the rocks stopped falling, the bubble he had created was completely covered from top to bottom. There wasn’t a shred of light anywhere.

“Fuck,” Lup said, which aptly described how Barry was feeling. “Quick thinking, Bar, good job.” 

She snapped her fingers and a few balls of light lit up the bubble, floating aimlessly around them.

He lowered his wand, focusing on the spell well enough for it to stay steady, and turned his attention to Lup. She wasn’t injured, besides some scrapes on her arms from when Barry had shoved her to the ground. He felt a little bad about that, but the tunnel was small and he didn’t want her to move out of range of the bubble.

Lup fished her Stone of Farspeech out of her robes as Barry gave her a tight smile in response. He sat up against the side of the bubble shield as she called back to the ship. Davenport was sending Taako, Magnus, and Merle to come to get them out (which Barry already knew would be a disaster, even if they worked well together). When she hung up, all that was left to do was... wait. There was a light on the top of her Stone to show it was being tracked, and they couldn’t do anything else to make it go faster.

“Sorry for pushing you,” Barry said. Lup shrugged and sat cross-legged across from him.

“No biggie,” she said. “It was either be pushed to the ground or get killed by a rock, so I don’t think I have the right to be mad about it right now. Or the want to, anyhow.”

Waiting was slow going. Barry knew Lup wasn’t a particularly patient person and could tell when she was starting to get antsy. Neither of them were good at sitting still, but Lup’s foot had been tapping for ten straight minutes before she started searching through her pack for things to do.

“Hey, Bar,” she asked, five minutes into that, “Wanna help?”

“Gods, yes,” Barry said, shuffling his way over to her side. “Give me something to do.”

Lup muttered something under her breath that Barry didn’t catch, and probably didn’t want to. She turned the whole bag over and pushed half of it towards him.

“Do... something with that,” she said and started working on her half.

Barry started to organize it because that was probably what Lup had meant. He sorted it by use first- things someone would need if they were going to a mission (waterskin, loose charcoal, which Barry didn’t want to begin questioning), makeup stuff (chapstick, face wipes, three different colors of nail polish, and one eyelash curler), and misc. (four individual playing cards, a note in Taako’s handwriting that just said “fuck you”, a photo of a baby elephant). Then he sorted by size.

When he looked back over to Lup, she had made a wobbly tower out of her half. Barry was startled into a laugh, which caused it all to fall over.

“Barold Bluejeans,” she said, turning on him. “You fucking monster.”

“S- sorry!” Barry gasped, leaning back against the bubble, not sounding sorry at all. “I thought- I thought we were both sorting!”

“I said “do something” not sort!” Lup said. “I cannot believe- oh, fuck, is that my charcoal, I was looking for that.”

Which just made Barry laugh harder. She scowled at him, in good nature, and snatched the charcoal from his piles. She eyed him as she started building her tower again, pausing only when he sniggered to send a light-hearted glare his way.

After a while, he finally got control of his laughter and watched her build a tower. She had two books she was using as the base, followed by a thinning stack of sticky notes, and a half-empty water bottle. After about three minutes, she finished the pile, which had been swaying precariously as she added things, and placed the charcoal on top. She leaned back on her hands and looked at it.

“Hey, Bar,” Lup said, not taking her eyes off the pile.

“Yeah?”

“I’m bored.” She tore her gaze away from it to look at him, lips turned into a cute little frown. “I wanna do somethin’ else.”

“Not a lotta options here, Lup,” Barry said. She frowned, tilting her head at him. His heart stuttered a little. “We can, uh. Talk?”

“About what?” Lup asked. “‘What’s your favorite color?’ I already know yours is denim blue. You’re predictable, babe. I don’t know what to ask that wouldn’t seem like this is a bad first date.”

Barry flushed a little.

“This would be a very bad first date,” Barry said and Lup laughed. She scooted up next to him, careful not to disturb her pile while she moved. After a second, she pressed her arm next to his and leaned onto his shoulder. Barry’s brain short-circuited, almost missing what she said next.

“We’d have to be on at least third date questions,” Lup said thoughtfully. “Like, uhh. What’s your social security number?”

“I don’t remember that!” Barry laughed and Lup buried her head into his shoulder, giggling. “I- I barely even knew it when we were at home, Lup, how do you expect me to remember it after forty-five years.”

“Joking, Barry,” she said, laughing a little still. “I’ll ask a better question, then. Uh. When you were a kid, what did you wanna be when you grew up?”

“Astronaut,” Barry said immediately, which sent Lup into another fit of giggles. She looked up at him, grinning.

"For real?" she asked and when he nodded, she whistled. "Dang, babe, you got your dream."

"I- I guess," Barry said. "It's not like- I mean, I gave up on that dream fairly quick back home. One, because it was pretty unrealistic until the Light came, and two, because it seemed... I don't know, unrealistic. I was a professor, Lup, I didn't- the mission was more of a... midlife crisis decision, if we're being honest."

Lup hummed, dropping her head back down to lean on his shoulder. Barry worried he went too far for a moment.

"I forget that human's live such short lives," Lup said quietly. The mood of the room (bubble) shifted when she said that. It took on a somber tone. "Me and Taako weren't adults until we were a hundred. By that age, you'd be all old and wrinkly."

"Hey," Barry said, nudging her. "I'm old and wrinkly now."

She snorted but shook her head.

"Guess Magnus's "live now, die later" attitude kinda makes sense when you think about it like that," Lup said. "Like, you age so fast. You just kinda have to do what you want when you want so you can actually get it in there, y'know."

"Not really," Barry said. "I mean, there's a lot of time to do things still, but I see where he's coming from. You don't wanna not do something and regret that you never did it."

Lup seemed to think on that for a second. Barry did, too. She was still pressed against his shoulder, close enough that her hair was tickling his neck. He looked away and sighed slightly. If he was being honest, he probably should take his own words to heart. Life, love, never lasts long enough and as soon as you get what you want, it's counting down the seconds until something takes it away. Circumstances, opportunities, death. Something always took it away.

They had an endless amount of time to get it right. But Barry didn't want to be the one to break her heart when they stopped the cycles and he started to age again.

"Barry," Lup said, quiet, but absolutely deafening in the silence of the bubble. "I, uh. I think we need to talk." She sat up, turning herself towards him completely. Barry's heart thundered in his chest.

"I know humans don't live long," she said carefully. "And we don't know when we're gonna get out of these cycles. But I... can't ignore things because of that. I can't just fucking- pretend that I'm not feeling things? Because that's not healthy and also, by the way, it fucking sucks. I'd rather-"

She broke herself off. Barry saw her hands dig into the dirt under them.

"This isn't the best place to say it," she said, looking away. She backed up a bit and knocked her pile over in the process. "Uh, my bad, I just-"

"I don't wanna pretend either," Barry blurted out, before he even thought about what he was saying. "Being trapped in a bubble under a collapsed mineshaft isn't the best place to talk about anything, Lup, but it's you and I don't wanna make you not want to say something. I, uh. I think I get what you're getting at, though."

He steeled himself, taking a deep breath in. Okay, he was doing this. He was doing this. He just had to, uh, collect himself first, and-

"I like you," and Lup beat him to the punch line. Barry blinked at her and she hurried along. "Like, in a romantic way, I mean. Not like- I like the others just fine, but I like you, Bar."

"Oh," Barry said. Lup chuckled nervously, not looking at him.

"Yeah," she said. "Um, like I said, not the best place to talk about it, but-"

"No!" Barry said. "No, Lup, I like you too! Fuck, I- I wasn't expecting you to, uhm- Lup, I like you so much, I didn't wanna make things weird."

"This whole goddamn situation is weird," Lup said, hitting the side of the bubble with her hand.

"No, like, us," Barry said. "Like as a friendship, I didn't wanna make it weird. I'm..." he sighed. "It's complicated for a lot of reasons, Lup, I'm human. I-"

"So it's a no?" Lup said awkwardly.

"No!" Barry said. "No, no, no, it's definitely a yes! I just don't want- I don't wanna fucking... die on you when the cycles stop, Lup. I don't want it to end and I don't want you to have to deal with that."

"That's not up to you," Lup said at once, sounding a tad bit annoyed. "If I wanna date you, that's my choice, and if you die, then it's my emotions I'm going to be dealing with. I don't want you to beef it, obviously, but- it's not up to you to figure out how I'll react then. I wanna do now with you and I wanna do that all the way up until we can't. It's fine if you don't- don't want that, but I-"

She was starting to tear up a bit and he panicked, scooting forward.

"Sorry," he said, because he didn't know what else to say. "I- I wasn't thinking about now, I was focusing on later. I- I don't want to see you upset because of something I've done, if I can help it. I got a little stuck in that.

"I desperately want this to work out," Barry said, holding out his hands. She wiped away a tear and clasped her hands in his. "There's no one I'd rather be with than you, Lup, I promise. But I wanna talk about what all it'll mean, first, if that's alright with you. I wanna make this work."

"Yeah," Lup said thickly. "Of course."

She hesitated for a second, and then wrapped him in a hug. His heart was beating fast as he hugged back, burying his face into her neck. After a moment, she drew back a little, pressing her forehead against his.

"Can I kiss you before we talk, or do you wanna wait 'til after?" she asked. The air momentarily left Barry's lungs. He took a deep, needed, breath in and nodded. When he realized that the nod answered nothing, he said,

"Now's good, if you, uh, if you want."

"Now," Lup said decisively, leaning in.

If you asked Barry, the day could be divided up into two parts: before he kissed Lup, and after. Maybe that was stupid, because they were buried under a pile of dirt and rocks right now, but... Her lips against his were fire and ash and everything wonderful and powerful. The touch was soft, because they were both uncertain, and Barry drew back just far enough to say,

"I'm sorry, are you sure-"

Before she was pressing her lips back up against his, stronger, with more intent. Barry's heart felt like it was going to explode in his chest as she tugged him closer with the arms she had around his neck.

And then he felt like his heart did actually explode when something clanged against the side of the bubble. Barry startled back, hitting the opposite end of the barrier, and looking towards where the sound had come from. Lup scooted back towards him, raising her wand towards it. It hit again and Barry recognized the blade of a shovel, scooping away the dirt.

In a matter of seconds, there was a sizable amount gone and there was Magnus, who grinned upon seeing them. He saw Taako standing against the wall a little further back and Merle on the ground, talking to him.

Lup swore. Barry saw that the tips of her ears were pink when she shoved her want back into her holster.

"We'll get back to this later," she promised. "The kissing and the convo, I promise. Help me put my shit back in my bag."

"Yeah," Barry said, his whole face flushed. "I can do that."

#blupjeans #barry bluejeans #lup #i swear this is an outlier they wont all be this long sldkjdsf #asks #anon #ise cube writing #also the thing lup muttered under her breath was 'oh i could give u PLENTY of things to do'

[jovialyouthmusic]

Silver Service

Both Madeleine and Lucretia get closer to the truth, and Liam and Olivia fear for their future.

Word Count 3522

A/N Warnings - implied smut, and discussion of attempted murder.

18 Revelations

‘So it’s positive’ Sophia said, referring to Olivia’s pregnancy test. Bastien frowned and put his fingers to his lips before speaking loudly.

‘Yes, the reception for the fashion show was very good’ he replied. He beckoned her over to the desk in their suite, where he had his laptop set up while he organised security rotas remotely with Lewis, who had gone on to Krona. He and Sophia would be following the day after, along with the King’s security detail. He tapped away on the screen and turned it toward her.

Must be careful of eavesdroppers. he had typed Maid cleaning in bedroom. Sophia nodded, but she sat on the edge of the desk.

‘You know, you really did an excellent job modelling’ she said huskily ‘I’d like to see your technique again. It really impressed me how fast you could change. Perhaps if you did it again, more slowly, I could do a little critique’ She made a gesture toward the bedroom with her head, and Bastien frowned for a moment before catching on.

‘I’m not planning on making it a career’ he said loudly ‘But I’m always looking to improve my performance – in all areas’

‘Well, let’s take this to the bedroom then’ she purred, pitching her voice toward the adjoining door. At that, the maid appeared suddenly, her face flushed. Sophia jumped away from Bastien, feigning surprise.

‘I forgot the sheets’ the maid said, flustered ‘I’ll come back later’ and scurried out, head down.

‘Well done’ Bastien said ‘That got rid of her – now I’d better do a sweep to see if she’s planted anything.’ He strode into the room and scanned it, first visually, then skimming his fingertips along walls and under ledges. He reached into his pocket for a small gadget with a button and a dial, and stood looking at it for a while. Finally he turned to Sophia.

‘It’s okay, no listening devices that I can detect. I think she was just eavesdropping.’ He paused by a drawer at the dressing table and opened it. ‘Maybe she was going through these as well’ he speculated.

‘She was acting rather suspiciously’ Sophia affirmed ‘She couldn’t leave fast enough when we said we’d move into the bedroom.’ Bastien looked thoughtful

‘What did you do with the receipt from the chemist?’ he asked. Although every noble house kept stock of various supplies from chemists and pharmacists for general use, he thought it better that she get something for Olivia off premises so it couldn’t be traced. She looked around for her purse, which rested on the dressing table.

‘Stop’ Bastien said ‘Think when you last had it – is it in the same place? Do you think it’s been tampered with?’ Sophia hummed in thought

‘Hmm, I thought I’d left it on the back of the chair’ she said. Bastien cursed under his breath

‘I’m sorry Sophia, I should have told you to dispose of it discretely – preferably not here at the Manor’ She huffed.

‘I wasn’t expecting anyone to go through my handbag’ she retorted. Bastien sighed

‘I forget you don’t have the training’ he said ‘She had time to look through it – let me see’ She took the receipt out of the bag and gave it to him. He groaned

‘That’s pretty specific’ He said heavily ‘She’ll know exactly what you bought if she saw it. I wonder if anyone’s asking her to do this, or if she’s just naturally nosy’

‘She’d think the test was for me, surely’ Sophia said. Bastien shook his head

‘Staff at these places are used to their clients being crafty’ he said ‘Gossip spreads like wildfire, and it’s known I’ve – well’ he paused and reached out to her apologetically. ‘I’ve been as discrete as I can over the years with my romantic involvements, but it may be known that I’ve had a vasectomy – many of the unmarried Guards do’ Sophia sucked in her breath. He rubbed her arm consolingly as she dropped her head. ‘You know I’m just with you now, don’t you?’ he said gently ‘I never encourage anyone else – ever’ She drew a shaky breath and nodded.

‘I know’ she said ‘I just don’t like being reminded’ He stood back and started to unfasten his tie, gazing at her as he did so.

‘Now then, Missy’ he said ‘I believe you wanted to see me undress?’ Sophia perked up and sat on the edge of the bed, biting her lip.

‘Any time, agápe mou’ she purred.

------

Madeleine sat back in the plush seat of the limo. Her mother snored softly, head lolling on the headrest as they made their way back to Krona. Penelope’s maid had told Madeleine about the purchasing of a pregnancy test, and revealed that Olivia had not been eating at breakfast, but she wanted to be methodical and eliminate the other ladies at Applewood. It couldn’t be Sophia – everyone knew her lover had never gotten anyone pregnant. Either he was firing blanks naturally or was sterilised – though the thought occurred to her that he was just the person who could probably hide something like an unwanted pregnancy. Lady Hana wasn’t seeing anyone, and Madeleine had always had the idea that she preferred women – or would, once she’d admitted it to herself. Drake was too savvy to get anyone pregnant – he’d bedded many of the ladies of the court and a lot of staff too and couldn’t afford any ‘accidents’ so it wasn’t likely to be Riley. Kiara struck her as a very conscientious young woman, sexually active, and most likely on birth control as pregnancy would certainly put a stop to her career ambitions.

The most likely candidate was Olivia then – and she must be sleeping with Liam. He certainly wasn’t stupid or reckless enough to get anyone accidentally pregnant. Had they got some sort of arrangement? When she had them staying at Karlingford she’d soon find out, she told herself.

------

‘Excuse me’ Olivia’s aide, Ruby, addressed the major domo at Karlingford, who looked up from his clipboard with an air of irritation.

‘I’m very busy, is it important?’ he snapped.

‘It most certainly is’ Ruby gave as good as she got. This snooty soft lowlander wasn’t going to get the better of a mountain dwelling Lythican. ‘Lady Olivia is not pleased with her quarters’ Harold sighed in annoyance.

‘Lady Madeleine allocated the rooms personally, and has given Lady Olivia the second best suite available. May I ask what is wrong with that?’

‘It may be your idea of luxury, but as you know, we Lythicans care nothing for soft beds and gilded ornaments. The placement is not to her liking. Lady Olivia has important business with the King and needs to be close by so he can call on her services at short notice’

‘It’s too late to change anything now’ Harold sniffed ‘Guests have been arriving all morning and it’s simply too difficult to make any alterations to the arrangements’

‘Would you like to explain that to Lady Olivia herself?’ Ruby asked ‘or perhaps the King might make a request in person when he discovers how inconvenient your allocation is’ Harold swallowed.

‘I’ll take another look at the schematic’ he said unsteadily ‘Karlingford is of course honoured to have the new King under our care, and Lord Godfrey has always been a gracious host’

‘Lady Olivia will be eager to hear from you. She’ll be in the King’s suite for now’ Ruby asserted, and went back to report to her boss.

------

Despite Madeleine’s efforts, the polo match was lacklustre. The weather was overcast and drizzly – not so wet to have to cancel, but enough to make both riders and horses cold and miserable. The stands were half full and spectators huddled in their waterproof coats under umbrellas. The donations were generous enough for the renovation of the main library, but only just managed to scrape past what they had hoped to raise. The afternoon tea served at Karlingford didn’t fare much better as gusts of wind threatened to blow the marquees away and all the bright summer outfits that folk usually wore to such events were discarded for warmer duller clothes.

The Duke was in a foul temper, and the King claimed he had to leave early to return to the Palace before carrying on to Lord Delacour’s residence in the Cormery Isles and the nobles’ golf tournament. Lady Olivia also left not long after.

However, Madeleine did discover that Olivia did indeed skip breakfast each day and was not seen before midday for the few days she was there. She couldn’t get much more information, as the rooms she had set up to eavesdrop on her were reallocated to Lord Delacour when Olivia demanded closer quarters to Liam, and she had her own maid brought over from Lythikos, refusing entry to any of Madeleine’s staff. Lord Neville was only too pleased to be staying in such a grand suite and was insufferably smug for his entire visit.

That fact actually played into her hands, as it meant Lord Neville was only too eager to help her in her efforts to spy on the Nevrakis heir. Sadly she heard not long after that Olivia would not be going to the Cormery Isles, but would be in Lythikos personally assisting in arranging the early winter sports events. She suspected that she and Liam would be spending some time together, but had no way of knowing for sure.

One thing Madeleine could do while she was at her father’s manor was to try and get more information out of her mother. Although she was notorious for bedding younger men, she didn’t do so when her husband was around. She would have spent her evenings with Regina, but the Queen Mother was spending hers with Lord Domvalier. Lord Godfrey spent as much time as he could with the King, and when he wasn’t available, would instead pay a visit to the Beaumonts or Delacoeurs or other worthy noble families.

That left Madeleine and Adelaide in each others’ company one night, and patiently she plied her mother with champagne and let her ramble on about whatever subject she cared to talk about. First of all she bemoaned the fact that Maxwell Beaumont was under her roof and she couldn’t lay a finger on him, then got rather maudlin and complained that Bastien now had a partner and had eyes for no-one else.

‘That man is dynamite in the bedroom’ she sighed ‘Maddy, you need a good man to keep you happy. Are you still a virgin?’ When she didn’t answer, she waved her hand dismissively ‘I can’t believe Leo didn’t at least sample what he could have had’ Madeleine gritted her teeth.

‘Mother, that’s really not appropriate’ she said ‘I might ask you what happened when you disappeared last month.’ Adelaide rolled her eyes and dropped her head back.

‘Okay sweetie, I know when I’m beaten. You’ve got a pretty low opinion of me already, what could it hurt?’ She sat forward in her chair to pour more champagne, but didn’t drink any. She looked at her hands, turning her wedding ring round and round on her finger.

‘I’m listening. I can’t promise not to judge, but I’ll try’

‘I – well, I went to Monaco to meet someone. He likes to play games with – you know being dominant. I’ll spare you those details’ Madeleine’s blood ran cold as she listened ‘He – he tried to kill me, like I said. ‘He…’ She closed her eyes and tears squeezed out ‘He injected me with heroin and left me to die.’ Madeleine couldn’t speak – she was filled with rage against the perpetrator. Whatever her mother was – drunk, lush, cougar – she didn’t deserve to die. It was a while before her mother spoke again, so she handed her a tissue and sat next to her on the couch. She both wanted and didn’t want to know more. Why? Who? Her mind span.

‘If – if it wasn’t for the young man I’d met on the plane going to Monaco, I wouldn’t be here now’ she sobbed ‘He found me and called an ambulance’

‘Who was he?’ Madeleine asked in a strangled tone.

‘He said he’d followed me deliberately – that both Bastien and the King knew where I was going’ she went on ‘They asked if I’d press charges, that he was working with Anton Severus and the Sons of the Earth. I said I wouldn’t, because then you’d find out – and your father – and – and everyone’ She broke into fresh sobs and Madeleine sat trembling with horror and anger, unable to leave her mother’s side. Her hand hovered over her shoulder but didn’t land.

‘In the end I didn’t have to say anything, they caught up with them later. Bastien wouldn’t tell me the details, he wouldn’t even see me, he passed it over to Lewis’

‘This is outrageous’ Madeleine spat ‘How could they let them get away with this? There must be some way of getting retribution without the news getting out’

‘Please Maddy, don’t meddle with things’ Adelaide pleaded ‘I’ve learned my lesson, I won’t fall for something like that again’ Madeleine glowered – she couldn’t see how her mother could keep that promise. She knew who she had to talk to next, and it couldn’t wait.

-------

Bastien cursed as his phone pinged. Sophia lay beside him, fast asleep, and he too had been out for the count. He looked blearily at the screen, blinking at the bright light. Lewis, now on duty for the night shift, informed him that Lady Madeleine wanted to speak with him urgently and she was waiting in her study. He passed his hand over his face and swung his legs out onto the floor. He’d been expecting this though not at such a late hour, and went over the details of her mother’s situation in his head, rehearsing how much he could tell her daughter without compromising security.

Had he been anywhere else, he would have told her to go to his office, but she was on home ground. The only thing he could do to keep the upper hand was to get dressed as if for work, and take his time over it.

‘Mmmm’ Sophia murmured, stirring at his movements ‘What is it, Bas?’

‘Go back to sleep theá mou’ he said gently ‘It’s work – nothing for you to worry about though, a minor matter that I have to see to’ She muttered again, unintelligibly, and was snoring gently before he’d finished getting dressed. He took his time making his way to meet Madeleine, and presented himself with a calm demeanour.

‘Mr Lykel, you took your time’ the so called Ice Queen was uncharacteristically agitated.

‘What can I do for you, your Grace?’ he asked coolly.

‘It has come to my attention that you had some knowledge of an attempt to kill my mother’ she said, voice shaking a little. ‘I demand you tell me what you know, and bring the guilty party to justice’

‘This is a delicate matter, your Grace’ he replied ‘May I sit?’ She nodded in irritation, and also sat behind her desk, but she wrung her hands together as he went on

‘May I ask why you think this is the case, Lady Madeleine?’ he asked

‘She told me’ she said shortly ‘Why haven’t you dealt with this matter already?’

‘I can assure you that the matter is in hand, but it may cause repercussions if it got out into the public domain’

‘I don’t care if everyone knows it, or just you and me. I demand you deal with it in a satisfactory manner’ Bastien sighed

‘Exactly what did Lady Adelaide tell you?’ he asked

‘Enough’ she said, enraged ‘She also told me that a certain Mr Nazario was involved. Who is he?’

‘I can only reiterate that all this is extremely sensitive information and ties in with the security of Crown and State. His Majesty is aware of the situation, and I can assure you that your mother’s assailant will answer for his crime’

‘Mr Lykel, I’m sure you can appreciate that I was at one point close to being Queen of Cordonia, and the King has chosen no-one else’ she said persistently ‘I caution you that in the future you may regret any refusal to assist me’

‘I suggest that you take up the matter with his Majesty’ Bastien said, stony faced.

‘How convenient that he’s not here right now’ she said in a low tone.

‘Then you may have to wait until you see him in person. I cannot break his confidence’ Madeleine practically growled as she went on

‘Mr Lykel, if I am ever in a position to be your superior, your employment will be terminated and I will hire people who will be more co-operative.’

‘If you were my superior I would tell you what you needed to know and serve you appropriately. Unfortunately, I plan to retire from the Guard shortly, so that will not be an issue’ he said, omitting to tell her that he would also be part of Liam’s reformed Council. ‘Will that be all?’ He asked ‘It’s very late and I’m officially off duty’ Madeleine glowered at him.

‘You may leave’ she spat ‘but this isn’t the end of the matter’

------

Olivia decided to visit Lucretia on her way back to Lythikos. She had been moved from a maximum security facility and was under house arrest in a cottage in the grounds of the Palace. The King’s guard had swept the Palace for explosives and listening devices, but had only come across equipment that the previous King had installed to keep tabs on his guests, some of which were known to them and others that were not. Bastien was not one hundred per cent happy with the security of the Palace just yet, but Liam’s quarters had passed muster, as had all the other accommodation suites in both the main part of the Palace and the staff wing. Places like the ballroom, library and other common areas were still being checked and were off limits to all but the Guard and Army personnel.

Lucretia still refused to talk to anyone about her role in the assassination at the coronation. She was free to move around the cottage as much as she wished, but had a security detail if she ventured outside. She was known to take walks every day before lunch, so Olivia had the Palace cook prepare some Lythican cookies as a gift, and went to visit her in the afternoon when she might be taking tea.  Her aunt was waiting in her lounge, and rose to greet her.

‘You’re looking pale’ she remarked ‘Life in the lowlands doesn’t suit you’

‘If it makes you any happier, I’ll be going there tomorrow to organise the arrangements for the Royal Charity tour’

‘Oh, that’ Lucretia said ‘Constantine’s spawn is trying to curry favour with his subjects’

‘You really shouldn’t call him that’ Olivia flushed with anger ‘He’s nothing like his father’

‘Then he won’t hold on to power for long. If nothing else, his Father knew how to do that at least. Sadly it meants house Severus has had a hard fight to regain their rightful position. How is your husband?’

‘I wouldn’t know’ Olivia said shortly, and put the box of cookies on the table. ‘If you’d like to make tea, I brought Knophlinken.’ For a split second, Lucretia’s pupils darkened. Olivia knew she loved them, as she often had them made when she was a child. They were hard, strongly spiced and barely sweet at all. Her aunt opened the box and inhaled the scent.

‘Almost’ she said shortly ‘Too much cinnamon – but I suppose you can only get the real thing from Lythikos. I’m guessing they were made in the Palace’

‘Indeed’ replied Olivia ‘Liam had some spices sent from the Lodge’

‘Well I suppose they will do’ She rang a little bell for the maid she was allowed to employ and ordered her to make tea for them both.

‘So you refuse to visit your husband’ Lucretia went on ‘I must admit he’s not the man he should be. If he was, I wouldn’t have had to step in and accelerate his ascension to the throne. Sadly he was too slow or too stupid to take advantage of things. That, and Mr Lykel was lucky to spot the assassin I hired before he dispatched the King and Prince.’

‘I think you’ll find that was skill, and not luck’ Olivia said coolly. The maid came in with a tray of tea things. In Lythikos, it was served with hot spiced milk and never with sugar. Olivia found that the aroma of the spices turned her delicate stomach as her aunt went to pour it, and she dry heaved. Her aunt stared at her, narrowing her eyes, and Olivia’s blood ran cold.

‘Are the spices not to your taste my dear?’ she asked archly ‘Or could it be that you’re going to bear a child – the spawn of the Rys dynasty?’

@emceesynonymroll @sirbeepsalot @cora-nova @stopforamoment @drakeandcamilleofvaltoria

@drakesensworld @katedrakeohd @pedudley @indiacater @texaskitten30

@be-still-my-aching-heart @hopefulmoonobject @dcbbw @classylady1234 @ladyangel70

@rainbowsinthestorm @nomadics-stuff @gardeningourmet @furiousherringoperatortoad @kimmiedoo5

@bascmve01  @ibldw-main @addictedtodrakefanfic @trappedinfandoms @princess-geek

#silver service #bastien lykel #sophia x bastien #madeleine #adelaide #olivia nevrakis #protect and serve

[anistarrose]

Fear The Reaper A Lot, Actually - Chapter 5

AO3

Summary: It’s time for the hunt to resume. Noelle makes a promise, Kravitz conducts an interview, Taako plans a séance, and Barry makes a friend.

Characters: Kravitz, Taako, Barry Bluejeans, Angus McDonald, Magnus Burnsides, Merle Highchurch, Noelle | No-3113, The Raven Queen, The Director | Lucretia, misc. BoB cameos, Julia Burnsides

Relationships: Taakitz, Angus McDonald & Taako, Barry Bluejeans & Kravitz, Kravitz & Angus McDonald

Sorry for the late update! I was sick on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then on Thursday I decided to focus entirely on losing my mind over the new TAZ episode, so that means it’s time for a rare Friday chapter. Lots of stuff is happening in this chapter, so hopefully it was worth the wait!

(Also, I normally don’t write the chapter titles on tumblr for this fic because it makes the title section of the post look cluttered, but this one is called “me and the boys at 2 am looking for jeans.” Just really wanted to make sure you were all aware of that fact.)

***

Long past the curfew established by the Reclaimers’ training routine, at the hour of night when the moonbase’s artificial lights dimmed and the bonfires on the planet below faded away, four pairs of eyes watched Avi from the shadows. A murmur of excitement escaped from behind one of the glass spheres when he yawned and checked his watch, followed by a chorus of disappointed sighs when he slapped himself across the face and set back to work unloading a new supply shipment, but he didn’t seem to notice them over the muffled roar of high-altitude winds.

Finally, a passenger sphere floated back into the port and the Bureau’s three top Regulators disembarked, back from a planetside drill that had run long. From her perch on Killian’s shoulder, Carey leaned down to affectionately slap Avi on the back, and he quickly accepted her invitation to join their gang for drinks at the Chug ‘N Squeeze. As Avi led the way out of the port, Carey and Killian hot on his heels while Noelle followed more distantly, there was much hushed rejoicing among their shadowy, impatient observers.

“Finally,” Taako huffed. “I was starting to think he was pulling an all-nighter.”

After checking one last time to make sure the coast was clear, Angus stepped out of his hiding place and reached for the door of the transport sphere, but Magnus grabbed ahold of him by the collar of his shirt.

“Sorry, little guy, but you’re staying behind this time.”

Angus opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again, at a loss for words for the first time since he’d started speaking in complete sentences at age fourteen months.

“It’s nothing personal, Agnes — we just need someone to stay behind and distract Avi if he comes back before we do,” Taako explained. “And no one can resist all your nosy questions once you get going, so you’re the perfect accomplice!”

“I can think of a few people who can resist it,” Merle scoffed. “Number one, me.”

Magnus ignored them both, kneeling down to look at Angus in the eyes. “Ango, if I’m being honest… we had some close calls last time, and that was in a cave where we honestly weren’t expecting to find anything besides a clue or two if we were lucky. Tonight, we’re going to try and get a lich’s attention, so this morning, we all sat down and talked about it and agreed we’ll feel better if you’re safe up here.”

Taako sighed. “Gee, way to let the kid know we actually care about him. Now his ego’s gonna grow until it’s bigger than mine, and then where will I be?”

“It’s okay, sir. I’m sure you and Merle will still find ways to keep me humble.” Angus managed a smile.

“Stay safe, all right?”

“That’s the spirit!” Merle laughed, as Magnus picked him up and placed him inside the sphere. “Now hurry up and set the trajectory, Taako. Barry Bluejeans isn’t gonna arrest himself —”

“Please, hang on just a second!”

Four heads whirled around to face the port’s exit hallway, where Noelle was floating.

“It’s just me, don’t worry!” she assured them, noticing Magnus and Angus’s guilty expressions and Merle and Taako’s panicked ones. “I won’t let the Director hear a peep of this, I promise — but if you’re going after Mr. Bluejeans, I’d like to come with you. If you’ve got room in that sphere, of course.”

“Well, the scale of this lich hunting team is rapidly veering past ‘secret club’ and careening into ‘elaborate conspiracy,’ but… I guess this whole bargain is about your life too, isn’t it?” Magnus thought out loud. “Taako, Merle, are you guys alright with this?”

“A ghost would know where to find another ghost better than any of us would, right?” Merle asked, and Taako shrugged.

“Then welcome to the lich-hunting conspiracy, Noelle,” Magnus declared.

On her way to the sphere, Noelle patted Angus on the head, surprisingly gentle despite her heavy robot arms. “Sorry, pal. I didn’t mean to replace you.”

“It’s okay, ma’am,” Angus told her. “I know you’re better in fights than I am, so… just be sure to keep them safe, okay? And if you get a chance, could you ask Barry if our theory about the Voidfish was right?”

Noelle’s face display flickered, somehow expressing a determined smile with just a few dozen lit-up pixels. “I’ll do my best, I promise.”

***

There were many reasons for a soul not to join the others in the Astral Sea, but most often, it was because they were waiting for someone. Luckily, the person Kravitz wished to speak with was one such soul, so he was able to find her in only a matter of minutes.

There was only one island in the Astral Sea with a cottage on it, after all.

Though expertly constructed, it was clearly unfinished, lacking a door, roof, or windows — so Kravitz knocked on the cedar doorframe, and waited outside for the house’s occupant to respond. Just seconds later, a tall woman with a bandana tied around her hair met him at the doorway, smiling sadly and shaking her head as she laid eyes on Kravitz.

“Oh. You’re the emissary of the Raven Queen. I’m sorry, I — I wasn’t sure if I was hoping or fearing that you were someone else.”

“I understand.” Kravitz said softly. “You’re Julia Waxmen-Burnsides, right?”

“That’s right.” Julia offered him a calloused hand. “Nice to meet — er, formally meet you, Death.”

“Death is my mother. Call me Kravitz,” Kravitz replied as he accepted the handshake, and Julia chuckled.

“Okay, Kravitz. What brings you over to my humble island?”

***

“Well, this spot should be as good as any,” Taako announced, kicking a pebble across the black glass circle that once was Phandalin. “Magnus, did you bring the sacrificial denim?”

“Sure did!” Magnus held up a pair of freshly purchased jeans. “Also some candles, and an ouija board that Carey helped me steal from Leon the other day as part my rogue lessons.”

“Tell Carey that gaslighting Leon is my job, and she needs to quit infringing on my brand.” Taako pulled a piece of chalk from his pocket, tried and failed to draw a circle on the glass, then conjured a paintbrush instead and started painting a pentagram.

Meanwhile, Noelle drifted around haphazardly, the lights on her face growing dim. “It’s… it’s so empty here. I was bracing myself for ruins, for bodies… but there’s just nothin’ left. I can’t even remember where the bar was, or the hotel, or the stables…”

Merle looked away. “Sorry we dropped the ball on this one, Noelle…”

“S’alright. You made up for it in the lab last week, with the savin’ the world and negotiating for my soul an’ all.”

“Well, don’t get too comfortable in your robot body, ‘cause we might not have much time left in the living world if Barry doesn’t show tonight.” Taako placed the jeans in the center of the pentagram, then lit them on fire. “But I think this’ll get his attention. Everyone, come join hands!”

Magnus kneeled and took Taako and Noelle’s hands, while Merle stood up on his tiptoes to do the same.

“You’ve done this before, right?” Merle whispered.

“Plenty of times.” Taako summoned a Mage Hand and adjusted his scarf to cover his nose and mouth, as the fire in the center of their circle intensified. “Noelle? Would you do the honor of reaching out for us?”

“Uh, I’ve never been to a séance quite like this one. Maybe you’d be the better one to —”

“Barry, you asshole! Too much of a coward to show your face!” Merle shouted. “Heard about how I banished Legion and got the heebie-jeebies, didja?”

The ruins of Phandalin fell eerily silent, aside from the quiet crackling of the fire.

“Sorry. Still not detecting any liches,” Noelle reported.

“Well, being a dick didn’t work,” Merle muttered. “Shoulda brought some booze and thrown a party — maybe that would get his lazy ass’s attention.”

“I’m pretty sure liches can’t drink, Merle,” Noelle told him. “And honestly, now that I’m thinkin’ about it, I can’t imagine why Barry would be obligated to haunt this here town just ‘cause it’s where he died. Are y’all sure this is the best place to look for him?”

“Positive,” said Taako, but Magnus spoke over him.

“Maybe we should widen our search area. Quick, what other places would be significant to Barry?”

“How ‘bout the cave where he got his ass kicked?” Merle suggested. “You know, the place where we met G’larg or whatever his name was.”

Magnus let go of Taako and Noelle’s hands to fan the air in front of him. “Well, a hike sure sounds better than standing around inhaling denim fumes, I’ll give you that.”

Taako extinguished the blaze then cast Phantom Steed, and Garyl manifested atop the embers of the fire, rearing into a majestic pose. “Hiking’s for chumps. Garyl and I will race you there!”

***

Julia led Kravitz inside the cottage, which smelled pleasantly of cedar and lavender, and motioned for him to sit down in one of two rocking chairs. She sat in the other, crossing her legs and absentmindedly rocking back and forth.

“So, Maggie went and got on the Raven Queen’s bad side, did he?”

“Not permanently, I’m hoping,” Kravitz replied. “I don’t know him as well as you, but he and his fellow death criminal associates don’t strike me as anything like the usual bounties I hunt. I was hoping you could testify on his moral character, and maybe also shed some light on how he cheated death, because he sure doesn’t seem to know.”

“Well, he’s survived some close battles — but I assume you’re looking for necromancy, not near-death experiences.” Julia drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “And I know Magnus is no necromancer.”

“I figured as much. Did he know any necromancers, though?”

Julia shook her head. “No. He’ll stand up to any authority figure if he believes they’re abusing their power, but that’s not because he just walks around looking for rules to break — it’s ‘cause he can’t stand injustice. He’s a good man, and I can’t imagine him throwing his lot in with a lich or someone like that to flaunt the laws of life and death…”

Her voice trailed off. “Do you know how long ago these so-called crimes happened?” she asked.

“They all registered in our system at once, about twelve years ago. Needless to say, I’m assuming he didn’t die 19 distinct times within minutes of each other, so there must’ve been some warding that was previously hiding him from our detection. We’ve seen that kind of thing before, although never quite to the same extent.”

“Twelve years ago was before I knew him,” Julia admitted. “I’m not sure I even know where he was living or what he was doing twelve years ago.”

“Forgive me changing the topic, but are his parents still alive? Or any siblings, aunts, uncles?”

“He was an only child, and his parents passed away before I knew him — I think he was an adult at the time, but barely, so… that would’ve been thirteen, fourteen years ago, maybe? He never told me how they died and I never pressed him, so — wait a second, you’re the Grim Reaper. Shouldn’t you know exactly who’s dead and who isn’t?”

“I really should,” Kravitz agreed, “and that’s the problem, actually. I can’t find any relatives of Magnus in the registry of deceased souls — no parents, no grandparents, no cousins…”

“You only found people who were Magnus’s family by marriage,” Julia realized out loud. “That’s why you came to talk to me.”

Kravitz nodded. “Exactly — but it gets even weirder. Magnus’s fellow adventuring buddies and apparent death criminals are an elf named Taako and a dwarf named Merle, whom I don’t suppose you know —”

Julia gasped, not in recognition, but in dawning realization. “Don’t tell me you can’t find their families, either.”

“All I found for Merle were some fourth cousins, and equally distant relatives. I couldn’t find anything about Taako.”

“The plot sure has thickened, huh?” Julia muttered. “You’re right that I don’t know Merle or Taako, they must’ve been… you know, after my time. But I can swear to you, if this is some kind of — some kind of necromantic conspiracy, then Magnus is the victim, not the one behind it. He could not and would not plan something like this for years while keeping it a secret all this time. He wouldn’t have hid it from me or from Steven —”

“I believe you,” Kravitz told her, “and I believe Magnus, when he says he genuinely doesn’t know how he died nineteen times. But because I believe you, and because I think you’re right on the mark with regards to a necromantic conspiracy, I have one last question: have you ever heard the names Lup or Barry Bluejeans?”

Julia snorted quietly at the latter name, but shook her head. “No. Are they… necromantic conspiracy suspects?”

“You could say that. More specifically, they’re liches whom we first detected around the same time as Magnus. At the time, I assumed it was a coincidence, but now… well, there a few different first impressions of Magnus and his adventuring buddies that I’m reevaluating.”

“Tell me about it. That man contains multitudes.” Julia leaned back in her rocking chair. “If there’s anything else I can do to help exonerate Maggie — any questions or testimony you need — I’m sure you’ll be able to find me here for a long, long time, but… can I ask something of you, if it’s alright?”

“Depends. What is it?”

“Can you help me send a letter?”

***

For the first few hundred feet of the race, Noelle kept up with Taako via her rocket boosters, but then opted to save her fuel, and Garyl surged ahead towards the mountains.

“Eat my dust!” Garyl whinnied. “I’m gonna find those oatssss!”

“Liches, Garyl. We’re looking for liches,” Taako reminded him.

“Yeah, but liches always have some loose spectral oats in their robe pockets!” Garyl scaled the foothills with ease, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake. “Sometimes they even give me spectral sugar cubes! Why dontcha ever hang out with liches anymore?”

Taako yanked on the reins. “Excuse me?”

“You haven’t given me sugar cubes in decades,” Garyl moaned as they came to a halt. “Or even spectral carrots.”

Taako dismounted, turning away from the face of the mountain to look at Garyl in his iridescent rainbow eyes. “You gonna elaborate ‘bout me allegedly hanging out with liches, pal?”

“What is there to elaborate about? You used to hang with liches, and then you just —” Suddenly, Garyl’s eyes went wide. “Look out! Above you!”

Taako dismissed Garyl with a wave of his hand, and the binicorn disappeared in a flash of rainbow smoke. “Yeah, no, I’m not buying that. You’re just pulling my leg again —”

He turned around slowly and casually, not expecting to see anything out of the ordinary — only to find himself facing a crumbling mountainside, dozens of massive boulders already rolling on a trajectory straight towards him.

He instinctively raised his Umbra Staff, only to freeze up, no idea what spell he could cast in time to save himself — but then something in his peripheral vision flashed red, and not a full second later, he was standing atop a distant hill, a hundred meters away from the site of the rockslide.

“Are you okay?” a voice behind him rasped. “I didn’t mean to startle you — I know you probably had it under control, but I — I just panicked. Sorry.”

Taako turned around to face a familiar red-robed specter, two vaguely eye-shaped lights under his hood looking Taako over.

“You know, I was actually pretty un-startled until you popped up behind me and started rasping in my ear! Let an elf have his personal space, Barold!”

“What?” The lights beneath Barry’s hood froze in place, as did every thread of his robe, paralyzed in spite of the gentle breeze. The rasp in his voice dissipated as he went on: “Taako, how much do you remember?!”

Taako blinked. “Remember?”

“Talk to me, Taako! Please!” Barry grabbed Taako by the shoulders, incorporeal hands trembling. “Do you remember your sister? Do you remember Lup?”

“Ugh, that sound! Why do you have to do that right in my face?” Taako shrugged off Barry’s barely-tangible grip, clapping his hands over his ears.

“You heard static?” Barry gasped. “Oh, no. No. I thought —”

“You bet I just heard the worst five seconds of ASMR ever! What do you want from me, man? All I know about Lup is that she’s a lich like you, ‘cause that’s all Kravitz could tell me —”

“Kravitz told you about us?!”

“Yeah, he did! Told me you two were his most elusive bounties, and that I could never let my guard down around you!” Taako reached into the quiver slung over his shoulder, pulling out a sapphire arrow. “And I think it’s about time I gave him a heads up that you’re hanging out right here, soul ready for reaping —”

“Do NOT summon Kravitz!” Just seconds before Taako plunged the arrow into the ground, Barry tore it out of his hand and hurled it through a rift. “Why the fuck would you summon Kravitz?!”

Taako’s grip tightened on his Umbra Staff, and Barry recoiled. The lights under his hood looked like they were melting, shedding glowing droplets that cascaded down some semblance of a face within the void.

“Taako, please,” Barry pleaded. “I’m not your enemy, and — and Lup isn’t either, I swear! She wouldn’t want this!”

Taako raised the Umbra Staff to cast, but no spell fired from the umbrella as it shuddered in his hand.

“You can’t listen to what Kravitz tells you — he doesn’t know why we became liches! He doesn’t know about the Hunger!” Barry’s robe was fraying before Taako’s eyes, crimson threads unraveling at the edges of his sleeves. “What if — what if he thinks you’ve cheated death? What if he sends you to the Eternal Stockade?! Taako, I’m begging you, I — I — I don’t know what I would do if I lost you too!”

Taako cast again, and the Umbra Staff still refused to fire, the beginnings of a spell entering his arcane focus on one end but never leaving it on the other. As Barry drifted closer, sparks jumping between stray red threads and face a mess of swirling light and shadow, Taako turned to his last resort — stalling for time.

“You know, Kravitz was thinking real hard about sending me to ghost jail the other day, but I convinced him not to. Don’t you want to hear my side of the story?”

Barry froze, the unraveling of his robe momentarily halted. “In the Miller lab? What happened?!”

“We made a deal. He was going to arrest me, Magnus, Merle, Lucas, and Noelle — but I got an idea he liked better. I asked if he’d let us go free if we captured another bounty or two for him — so he gave us two months to capture you and Lup.” Taako shrugged, so focused on trying not to panic that he hardly noticed the sound of electricity crackling and fabric tearing. “So if you just turn yourself in, then at least you’ll only have to worry about me half as much.”

Barry convulsed as a jagged gash tore through his robe from shoulder to waist, an intangible darkness spilling out from within him and pooling on the ground below.

“LUP!” he shouted, voice echoing between mountains and through underground lairs for miles and miles. “They — they signed their own death warrant, Lup! I — I can’t do this without them, I can’t do this without you — where ARE YOU?!”

“Taako! There you are!”

Magnus sprinted onto the scene, Merle and Noelle hot on his heels. He thrust himself between Barry and Taako, then pulled a sapphire arrow from his own belt, jabbing it into the shadow-covered ground at Barry’s feet. “Kravitz, we’ve got a bounty for you!”

The lights beneath Barry’s hood coalesced back into two flickering eyes that immediately fixated on the arrow, which was already engulfed in a crackling blue aura.

“Boys, I promise I’m going to fix this,” he rasped, and then vanished into thin air.

“Wait, come back!” Merle called out, rushing towards the spot where Barry had been floating. “I didn’t even get a chance to talk to you —”

Taako yelped as his Umbra Staff inverted, and the arrow flew through the air towards its maw — but milliseconds before the umbrella snapped shut around it, Kravitz manifested in a puff of smoke, already dual-wielding sapphire scythes.

“Did you find Barry? Where is he?”

“He got away, I think,” Magnus sighed. “I probably shouldn’t have summoned you where he could see, but I rushed in because I was so worried about him hurting Taako —”

Noelle floated around Taako in tight circles, scanning him from all angles. “It doesn’t look he hurt you, but… I’m getting some traces of conjuration magic? Did you have a wizard’s duel or something?”

“Oh, god no. I probably wouldn’t be alive if we had,” Taako admitted. His heart was still pounding, but he tried not to let it show. “Conjuration magic, though… let’s see. That would probably be from when he — when he teleported me away from the mountain, after those rocks started falling.”

“Those rocks?” Noelle gestured towards the massive pile of rubble at the foot of the nearest mountain. “Those look like they could’ve killed you!”

“I know, right?” Taako replied. “Very uncharacteristically benevolent of him to show up when he did.”

“As great as it is that you’re not dead, Taako, it was also very convenient of him to show up when he did,” Kravitz paced across the hilltop, scythes crossed in front of him like the world’s most dangerous dowsing rods. “I can’t sense his presence anymore, meaning he’s squirreled himself away in some sort of warded hideout… but if he appeared out in the open here only shortly after you did, then that hideout of his must be nearby.”

He turned away from Taako, facing the mountains. “Which means he’s still nearby.”

Taako felt his hand grow warm, and looked down to see his Umbra Staff, energized from the absorption of the arrow… and pointing directly at Kravitz’s back.

“Let’s search the area.” Kravitz continued. “Leave no stone unturned —”

Taako pointed the Umbra Staff towards the sky — not a moment too soon. A beam of white-hot plasma pierced the clouds above and bathed the entire mountain range in daylight for a fleeting moment, before it fizzled out with a crackle of electricity and a whiff of ozone.

Kravitz whirled around. “Taako?!”

“I didn’t cast that spell! I don’t know how to cast that kind of spell!” Taako gasped. “My umbrella’s been acting up all night, but I didn’t know it could act up like this!”

Kravitz sighed and placed a hand on Taako’s shoulder.

“You know, on second thought,” he said, “maybe we should postpone the lich hunting until you get that thing checked out.”

***

Merle made a beeline for his bed the second the gang returned to the moonbase, while Taako took it upon himself to relay the night’s events to Angus as a bedtime story, and hopefully ensure that the kid actually got some sleep. Noelle had opted to stay planetside for a little longer and fly back up to the moon on her own later, explaining that she needed some time alone to process what had happened in Phandalin, and that left Magnus and Kravitz alone in the common room between the Reclaimers’ individual dorms.

“There’s no way Angus will relax enough to fall asleep in the next week if he hears about what happened tonight,” Magnus sighed, collapsing onto the couch. “Either Taako lies and says nothing happened, or he uses a sleep spell on a ten year old. You wanna make a bet on which?”

“I’ll pass. But you just reminded me, I actually have something for you.” Kravitz rifled through the interior pockets of his vest, pulling out a piece of shimmering blue paper. Although folded over on itself several times, it still felt almost intangibly thin, like parchment woven from cobwebs or even air itself.

Magnus raised an eyebrow, skeptical. “That better not be magical junk mail.”

Kravitz smiled, slowly shaking his head. “I spoke with someone in the Astral Plane today who had a lot of good things to say about you,” he explained. “She’s waiting to see you again, but hopes that day won’t come too soon, and… well, I haven’t read her letter, but I’m sure it speaks for itself.”

Magnus accepted the paper gingerly, eyes tearing up as he unfolded it to reveal Julia’s handwriting.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Kravitz plucked a raven feather from his robe, transmuting it into a quill pen with a snap of his fingers before handing it to Magnus. “I don’t allow this kind of thing every day, so don’t go around telling too many people about it — but you can use this pen to write a response on the back. Fold it up again once you’re done, and it’ll make its way back to her.”

Magnus leapt up from the couch to crush Kravitz in a hug that would’ve knocked the air out of his lungs, had he still been alive and breathing.

“Thank you,” Magnus repeated. “Thank you —”

Taako barged into the room, Umbra Staff slung over his shoulder. “You wanna guess what ‘cha boi had to do to get the kid to go to sleep? I’ll give you a hint, it wasn’t — okay, what am I interrupting here?”

A joke no doubt on the tip of his tongue, he froze as he noticed the tears running down Magnus’s face. “You okay there?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” Magnus let go of Kravitz, wiping his eyes and picking up the pen and letter again. “I — I’ll be in my room. I need some time to… I just need some time.”

Taako nodded. “Don’t forget to get some sleep yourself. Apparently you humans need, like, eight hours of it, go figure.”

“He’ll be alright,” Kravitz whispered to Taako, as Magnus closed the door to his room. “He just got a letter from someone he hadn’t heard from in a while.”

“‘Course he’ll be alright. He’s Magnus, he’s indestructible,” Taako replied, but Kravitz could hear the relief in his voice. “And in case you were wondering, the way to get Angus to fall asleep is to read him a detective story, but only as a distraction while you’re preparing a Sleep spell.”

Kravitz chuckled. “You know, speaking of distracting — what’s with that flashing Chug ‘N Squeeze sign on the moon campus? I don’t think it was there when I visited you the other day.”

“Oh, that? I think it’s some kinda wine and pottery place — why, you wanna check it out? ‘Cause it’s supposed to open in a day or two, or so says all the hottest moon gossip.”

“Well, I mostly just asked out of morbid curiosity, but it does sound like something I could enjoy ironically — and maybe even unironically, as a break from all this lich hunting and detective work. Do you want to check it out with me?”

“Oh, a wine and clay vacation day with the Grim Reaper? That’s a hell yeah from Taako!”

***

The second Barry returned to his cave, he bolted straight for an unassuming chest beneath a pile of discarded scrolls and tattered jeans. Though it only occupied about two cubic feet, it was warded against everything from fire to water to acid, and sealed with an arcane lock — which Barry dismissed by uttering the passcode, emergency bonds.

From inside, he retrieved a handful of trinkets — a driftwood necklace from Merle, a wand that Magnus had once unsuccessfully tried to summon a dog familiar with, and most important of all, a dozen different wedding rings, all hewn from different materials and given in different ceremonies on entirely different worlds. Barry picked up the envelope beneath them and then gingerly placed them back in the chest, opening the envelope to look through the pictures it contained.

The shadowy essence of his lich form had stopped leaking out of his robe the second he’d opened the chest and been comforted with the wave of nostalgia, but he felt his soul stabilize even further as he pulled out the first picture. It was a candid shot of him, Lup, and Taako in the Starblaster’s lab, buried up to their elbows in notes as they studied the Light of Creation, which the camera had only been able to capture as a vague white blur. The three of them all had bags under their eyes, but they were still smiling. They’d been so determined to develop a new theory, to find the answers that would save them and their family.

And there was no reason for Barry to abandon that determination or give up on that goal now.

For the next four hours, he scrawled calculations on almost every blank scrap of paper he had at his disposal, comparing research he’s done half a century ago with papers he’d read on cycles even further back. He unfurled no less than five individual maps of Faerun, circling promising locations before changing his mind and scratching out all but a few that he’d personally visited in the past.

By the time his plan was complete, almost all of the rips in his robe had mended themselves — though he still looked unsettlingly threadbare, and he trembled slightly even while floating in one place.

How long did Taako say they have? Two months, as of the crystal incident? There’s no need to panic — I’ve got time. I just need to play this smart.

He extended his senses outside of his lair, scanning the surrounding area for Kravitz or another emissary of the Raven Queen — and there was indeed an undead presence lurking near Phandalin, but unlike Kravitz, it lacked even the faintest trace of celestial energy. Even stranger, its aura seemed shielded, but less so than a lich possessing a living body would’ve been… as if the soul was inhabiting an inorganic body, instead.

The robot no doubt sensed him approaching, but gave no sign of signalling for help, which made Barry feel much better about his decision to venture out of the safety of his cave.

“Mister Bluejeans? That you?” she asked, and the sound of her voice was all it took for Barry to connect a series of dots that couldn’t have been further from his mind just a few moments ago.

“I know you. You were in the Cosmoscope — and before that, you were in Phandalin. You were a halfling.”

“That’s right. I’m Noelle — Noelle Redcheeck. I’m surprised you remembered me.”

“I’m surprised you’re not furious with me,” Barry whispered. “I couldn’t save you, or anyone else in Phandalin — I’m so sorry, Noelle. Maybe, maybe, if I’d been in my lich form, I could’ve —”

“You tried your best,” Noelle assured him, “just like the Reclaimers. Really, the only person I should blame is whoever made that terrifying gauntlet in the first place —”

“No,” Barry interrupted. “I knew her, and I knew how implausible this will sound, but she didn’t want this. She tried her best to stop it, too.”

Noelle took a moment to reply. “It sounds like you know a lot of things that the Bureau doesn’t.”

Barry nodded. “Speaking of which… I really shouldn’t stay out here in one place for much longer, or someone will sense me, be it the Bureau or Kravitz. Do you mind if we take this conversation somewhere else?”

“Just lead the way.”

They headed not to Barry’s main hideout, but to a slightly nearer cave that he used mainly for storage but had placed equally powerful wards over. Abjuration had never been his specialty, but his ability to pick it up on the fly had been invaluable during his time as a rogue lich — and now, he thought, my abjuring might be the one thing that saves my family’s lives. Funny how that works out.

“So, Noelle,” he asked out loud, “I saw you with Magnus and Merle earlier. Do they know you’re still down here?”

“I told them I wanted to stick around Phandalin for a while and think about what happened,” Noelle explained. “Which, come to think of it, wasn’t a total lie — because I did want to talk to you about Phandalin, and I guess I got that chance after all. But I’m also here because I promised my detective friend that I’d ask you something.”

“Assuming your friend’s alive, then they probably won’t even be able to comprehend the whole answer — but fire away, and I’ll tell you what I can.”

“Did the Voidfish erase the fact that you were a lich?”

“Getting right to the root of the problem, huh?” Barry paused. “Hmm. Let me put it this way — the Voidfish erased all memories that could make me believe I was a lich. Whenever I’m alive, whenever I’m amnesiac, the idea that I could be a lich or even a necromancer just sounds like a joke. I’ve tried leaving messages to remind myself of that fact, after coming back to life — but my living self never believed it.”

“It sounded like a joke to Magnus and the others, too.”

Barry sighed. “That’s ‘cause they’ve lost a lot of memories of their own.”

“But… they’re innoculated. How is that possible?”

“Noelle, we’re well past the point where I need to warn you about keeping this conversation a secret from the Bureau, right? And… probably from your detective friend, too, assuming they work for the Director?”

“Yeah,” Noelle sighed. “Angus will be disappointed, but I understand.”

“There’s a second Voidfish,” Barry explained. “It’s very well guarded, and only the Director’s been innoculated by it — so she’s used it to erase all kinds of information, from the Reclaimers’ pasts to… a coming storm, which this world is unlikely to survive.”

“This storm… will it be worse than the Grand Relics? Worse than what happened to Phandalin?”

“It’ll be not just worse, but maybe even infinitely worse. Because it’ll go on to destroy worlds beyond this one, if we let it.”

Barry had forgotten what it felt like to speak so freely about his past and the Hunger, to speak without worrying that his words would be distorted by static, and more and more information just poured out, far more than he’d initially intended to share.

“There is an entity called the Hunger that seeks to consume all of existence, and it’s only a matter of months until it begins its assault on this planar system. The Director and the Reclaimers and I, we were all like family, and we worked together in search of a way to destroy this Hunger, but… we had some disagreements. And really, neither side was right, but Lucretia — Lucretia used the Voidfish to erase our whole mission, the Hunger included. I became a lich to protect my family from the Hunger, so… when I’m alive, I don’t have any memory of being undead. And my family doesn’t have any memories of me… aside from that time in Phandalin when I got Merle to stab himself with a fork, I guess, which probably didn’t leave a great impression.” He managed a bitter laugh.

“How long ago did they forget?”

“Almost ten years ago.”

“I’m so sorry.”

It dawned on Barry that he was having most sincere, two-sided conversation he’d experienced in a decade — and ironically, the realization left him at a loss for words.

The same couldn’t be said of Noelle, who continued on without hesitation. “I promised my friend Angus not just that I’d get answers, but also that I’d look out for the Reclaimers. I don’t want the Grim Reaper, or the apocalypse, or whatever’s coming to hurt them — or anyone else in this world, like Angus, or Carey and Killian, or my family in Hogsbottom — so please, Mister Bluejeans, tell me what I can do to help. I want to do something with this extra time the Reclaimers gave me.”

“If you get caught helping me,” Barry warned her, “you’ll be imprisoned one way or another — either on the moonbase, or in the Eternal Stockade, depending on who catches you.”

“Well first of all, it sounds like at the rate I’m going, I’m gonna end up either back in the Astral Plane, or consumed by this Hunger entity in a matter of months if I don’t do anything to help you,” Noelle replied. “And second of all, I’m not plannin’ to just give up and let them arrest me if I do get caught.” She cocked her arm cannon.

Maybe it was risky to accept help from someone he barely knew, but Noelle had seemed nothing but sincere — and Barry had spent so long working alone that frankly, he was amazed it hadn’t killed him yet. He was a creature of bonds and of love; he sought out companionship by both nature and necessity. He didn’t know if he could do this alone, but alongside another undead soul who could actually understand and help, he knew for a fact that he could.

“Welcome aboard, Noelle.” Barry chuckled. “First things first: I’ve tried to stay out of the Raven Queen and her servants’ ways, because they’re really not evil at all, but if there’s any chance of stopping the Hunger, then we’ll need Taako and the others’ help for sure. Which means we’re going to have to do something about the Grim Reaper situation —”

“You know, I might have something to help with that.” A drawer Noelle’s main body slid open, revealing a sapphire-tipped arrow. “Magnus figured we should all have some summoning beacons on our person, in case of emergency.” She winked. “But I was thinkin’ we could use it to lure him into some kinda sinister trap.”

She paused. “He can’t eavesdrop on us through this thing, can he?”

“Not if we don’t say his name. But I’d close that drawer for now, just to be on the safe side.” Barry said as he summoned a scroll and pen, then started jotting down notes. “This is all perfect, though! I already hashed out the spell theory for a plan, but you just made it about a billion times easier to pull off — not just because of the arrow, but because you can gather components, and I won’t have to risk him sensing my location and realizing what I’m up to!”

“Makes sense,” Noelle replied, looking over Barry’s list. “That’s all you need me to get?”

“Yeah. I was thinking most of it would be salvageable from the Miller Lab — uh, except maybe the iron filings, which are commercially available anyway.”

Noelle beamed. “I won’t let you down, Mister Bluejeans.”

“Thank you, Noelle.” Barry looked down at his robe, which looked less tattered and more vibrantly red than he’d seen it in years. “For everything.”

***

End notes:

Apologies in advance if the update schedule gets a bit less consistent from here on out, since I’ve burned through my pre-written buffer chapters, but I’ve at least got a solid chunk of Chapter 6 written and a detailed outline for the chapters after that! It’s just about getting into the write headspace to write.

as usual, comments/reblogs mean a lot!

#taz #taz balance #taako taaco #kravitz taz #taakitz #barry bluejeans #no-3113 #angus mcdonald #magnus burnsides #merle highchurch #julia burnsides #lup taaco #fic: FTRALA #rosalia talks #taz balance spoilers

[overdramatic-queer-antagonist]

Echos of Something Long Forgotten

AO3

Yeah, I can write canon compliant things. Wild, I know.

Magnus should be in bed. It's three am, and he's got a long day of training tomorrow, but- He has nightmares a lot. Always about Julia. Most of the time, they're about what happened, Kalen, and such, but sometimes they're... something else. It's not that he can't remember the dream so much as parts. Scenery, people, and words, usually. 

He's had The dream since before Governer Kalen. Hell, Steven (his father in law, not the fish) took him to a dream specialist for it. Ze had said it was a sign of PTSD, but Magnus had never experienced anything like it in his waking life. 

In the dream, something descends from the sky. When Magnus tries to remember what, all he can think of is static. Dream Magnus knows what it is, though. His friend grabs his hand (Another piece of static. He can't think of his name or face. Magnus is pretty sure it starts with a B,) and they run towards some more static people. The captain tells them the game plan. Which is also mostly incomprehensible, but Dream Magnus gets it. And then they break off.

Magnus runs into the Hammer and Tongs. He's yelling for Steven and Julia, and he hears Steven scream. There are more people- no. not people. They're a part of the thing in the sky. He gets into the room just soon enough to watch the static monsters kill Julia. Even as she dies, she keeps hacking her ax at it. Sometimes Magnus wonders if she died fighting in real life, too.

The dream was marginally easier when he still had Julia. He'd wake up screaming for her every time. She never got frustrated, though, even when they were fighting. She'd kiss the scar above his eye, and they'd go downstairs and heat up some lavender tea. That's what he was doing now. He never did lose the habit of stocking up on lavender tea. It wouldn't be as good as Julia made it, but it would do.

Magnus was sure he'd be alone. Yet, here Taako was kneading dough way too hard.

"Taako? Is everything okay?" Magnus asks blearily.

Taako jumps and aims the Umbrastaff at Magnus, relaxing when he sees who it is. "Shit, Maggy! Thought you were one of those crystal monsters!" When Taako doesn't answer the question, Magnus raises an eyebrow. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just couldn't sleep."

"Yeah, same. Had a nightmare." Magnus says. He's trying to imply that Taako can tell him what's wrong.

"What about? Dogs falling off the moon?" Taako asks, making clear that he doesn't want to say why he's up.

"No, actually. About my wife. And what happened," Magnus is kinda lying, but he doesn't really want to get into it, and he doubts Taako would either.

"Fuck, sorry, dude." From anyone else, that would seem apathetic. But Magnus likes to think he knows Taako well enough to know that's not true.

"Yeah, just making some tea. Speaking of what are you making?"

"Oh, just basic sourdough. Don't have 'nuff energy for anything too fancy."

Magnus would love to tell Taako he's sure it will be delicious. He is. Those macaroons Taako made last month for Candlenights? Amazing. But Magnus knows that any mention of actually eating anything he makes will make whatever wrong worse. 

Those macaroons were the only thing of Taako's Magnus has ever seen anyone eat in the half-year he's known him. It's not like Taako doesn't cook. He does, all the time. But when he's done, he always just throws it away.

Instead, Magnus stays quiet. The two putter around the kitchen, making their respective coping foods, in silence until they hear a loud banging coming from Merle's room.

Magnus, you guessed it, rushes in. Well, actually. He knocks politely on the door and asks, "Everything okay?" He doesn't get a response, so he says, "Okay. I'm gonna come in now." and opens the door.

Magnus doesn't think he's ever seen Merle cry. Well, there was that time last month when Magnus cut his arm off, but even then, he barely shed a tear. Now, Merle was sitting at his desk, sobbing so hard that it shook. It looks like that banging Magnus heard was Merle's Xtreme Teen Bible! falling off of the desk.

Merle looked up at Magnus sadly and sighed, "Oh no, Mags. You don't need to see me like-" His thought was interrupted by another loud sob, and he gave up on trying to speak.

"Okay," Magnus starts carefully. "I'm gonna carry you over to the couch. Nod if that's okay." Merle nods, so Magnus gently lifts and walks slowly over to the couch. 

By the time he has Merle comfortably seated, Taako comes over with a rag that smells like lavender. (Magnus privately wonders if Taako just dumped his tea on a rag.) He puts the rag around Merle's neck and holds his hands.

"Okay, now tell me what happened," Taako says.

"I had a nightmare. I w- I'm sorry, I can't," Merle whispers the last part as if he thinks if he's quiet enough, the tears won't try to interrupt him.

"That's okay. You're gonna have trouble. Just keep trying." Taako says as he rubs circles into Merle's palm.

Merle takes a deep breath and continues, "I was playing chess with a man. I can't think of his face, but I'm pretty sure I knew him. J-J." He slumps over as he tries to think of the name.

"Don't worry, Merle. Just keep going." Magnus says.

"Okay... He kept- he kept asking me about my kids. And I kept trying to change the subject, but he just kept asking and- I can't explain it, but I just knew he was going to hurt them."

"Is there more?" Taako asks. Merle shakes his head. "Okay, now take slow, deep breaths. In for 7, hold for 4, out for 8."

After a few cycles, Merle looks like he feels a lot better, and he asks, "Now, where the hell did you learn that, Taako?"

Taako closes his eyes tight like he has a headache, and Magnus puts a hand on his shoulder. "It's not worth it. Just let the question slide past."

The trio sit in quiet for a moment before Taako finally asks, "Magnus, did your nightmare have static in it?" Magnus nods. "Mine too..." Taako says thoughtfully. After a moment, he lets out a loud groan and gets up. "There's something there! It's right there, but I. Can't. See. It. And it's driving me crazy!"

"Just let it pass. Do you wanna talk about what it's about?" Taako opens his mouth to speak and instead starts gagging. "Okay, me first. A big cloud of static comes down from the sky. There are seven of us. We all seem to know what's going on. We're trying to stop it. I go to the shop- Oh boy. One second," Fantasy Jesus, why is Magnus's mouth so dry. His heart was pounding, but he could work through that. "I go to the shop my father in law and I owned, and I can hear him screaming from the backroom. The last thing I see before I wake up is Julia hacking at a static monster, refusing to die. The worst part is these dreams started before they even died."

It takes a moment to realize why nobody's speaking. Merle's drinking a glass of water- good he was crying. He's probably dehydrated.- But Taako's writing furiously into a notebook. Magnus laughs. He looks just like- Taako gives him a weird look, and Magnus shrugs in return.

"Can you speak, bud?" Merle asks.

Taako sighs, "Yeah, I think it'll be okay. Wasn't sure, though, hence the notebook. Okay... Fantasy Mary Berry, this is like group therapy or something! So. I poisoned a whole town."

"Gosh, Taako, that sounds terrible. I'm so sor-" Taako interrupts Magnus with a sharp, bitter laugh.

"That wasn't the nightmare. It actually happened. An accident, obvi, but I'm still wanted. Glamour Springs, forty people died."

"Shit."

"Yeah. 'Shit' indeed. The point is that's why I don't really cook for anyone anymore. In my dream, I'm making something for someone... It's so weird. I want to say she's my sister, but I'm an only child. But, yeah. My 'sister' eats it. Thirty garlic clove chicken, because my brain hates me. It poisons her, and I sit there watching her die in front of me, unable to do anything but pray it doesn't hurt too much. I can't even figure out what I did to mess up the recipe so bad."

There's silence for a moment. Magnus doesn't really know how to proceed, and he's willing to bet the others feel the same. After a second, Merle speaks. "Wow. What a fucked up group we are, huh?"

Magnus laughs, "Yeah, that's one way of putting it, old man!"

Eventually, the conversation becomes less weighted and the silence more comfortable. It's nice. Knowing that there were other anomalies like Magnus. People who cried for people and places they didn't know that didn't exist, probably. Even so, Magnus can't shake how familiar all of this feels. Talking with Taako and Merle like this. It feels like he's done it a thousand times. But he guesses that's just another thought he has to let slip through the cracks. For now, he'll just goof off with the first friends he's made since the fall of Raven's Roost. Yeah. That sounds nice.

_____

Lucretia hoped that they would be asleep. She'd woken up with nightmares again, just like she had for the past 112 years, just like they all had. This was the day the Hunger took their home from them, after all.

She just wants to check on them, make sure they were still there. Not dead like her nightmares. They aren't. She hears Taako laughing from behind the door, and for a moment, all she wants to do is barge into that room and tell them about the latest book she read.

That's what they used to do on this day. When everything was too much like what they'd lost. Magnus would always try to get through it alone, but the Captian made sure nobody went through it alone. 

The twins would bake cookies, elderflower macaroons, Lucretia's favorite, and try to teach Barry how to make hot cocoa. They never could figure out if him drinking the one with milk in it was better or worse. Taako swore it was a sin to drink hot cocoa made with water, but Lup didn't want him to hurt his stomach.

Merle would listen to Lucretia rambling on about whatever book she'd just read. They had to stock up on them because she went through them so quickly. Taako would interject her retelling with comments and jokes. Whenever she read a particularly heteronormative one, he'd start interjecting ways the scene could've gone but didn't. It was like a party. It was a little too somber, but that just made it a shitty party.

It had been twelve years since their last shitty party. Lucretia wanted so bad to just walk in there and be like they used to. Taako, making fun of Barry and Lup. Merle, trying to get Davenport to dance with him. Much to the dismay of everyone else in the room.  Magnus, parading Lucretia around on his shoulders as she ranted about how overrated Fantasy Shakespeare was. 

But Lup and Barry are gone. Davenport's a husk. Magnus, Merle, and Taako, while they may not seem too different to the outside eye, are broken. And it's all Lucretia's fault. She tries to tell herself that she had no choice. Once the Hunger was stopped, they could go back to that. She really should be going, actually. But she's been all alone for twelve years. So she leans against the door of her brothers who don't remember her. She'll just listen for a little bit longer.

#the adventure zone #the adventure zone balance #taz #taz balance #taz balance spoilers #taz fic #fanfic #magnus burnsides #taz magnus #taz taako #taako tacco #taz merle #merle highchurch #taz lucretia #angst #tw swearing #tw panic attack #tw nightmares #tw ptsd

[raineydaywrites]

if i should wake before i die

ao3 link in source!

Summary: Febuwhump day 6: Insomnia

There have been a lot more insomniacs on the Starblaster this plane.

Lup couldn't sleep. It was a relatively recent problem for her. As a child, she'd learned to take every opportunity to sleep or meditate eagerly. It was rare for her and Taako to find a place that was safe enough for that, and refusing to do either always ended poorly for anybody's health.

Even when she'd been having nightmares, it rarely motivated her to give up for too long, usually just switching between mediation and sleep for a little while, depending on which experience involved the most troubling thoughts.

But tonight she tossed and turned unable to get rest of any kind.

They'd had to do this. They hadn't had any other choice- well that wasn't exactly true. They could have tried Lucretia's plan, but that wouldn't have worked much better, and it would have made it really dangerous and maybe impossible to escape to the next plane, so it was, at best, an absolute last resort situation.

That didn't make her feel any better about this plan.

Normally, she'd have qualified something like this as last resort too.

She remembered the robot world, when she had argued so strongly that they couldn't sacrifice other worlds just to stop the Hunger. She'd believed it so vehemently then. She still felt that conviction now. But how was this any better?

Sure, they weren't killing everybody. And they weren't doing anything directly, even. But that didn't change the fact that the devastation was their fault. This plane couldn't handle it forever. And so many people were suffering and dying because of their plan to stop the Hunger.

Yeah, sure, the Hunger was worse. And they had to stop it. But Lup couldn't help but wonder when she'd let her morals slip to this. They hadn't always been this. Somehow, she'd let herself become the kind of person that would do something like this.

And a part of her screamed with self-loathing. Screamed that this was never an acceptable plan. That the only reason they'd all even agreed to it in the first place was because they were so tired of running and suffering.

And they had a right to be tired. But it felt like all they'd done here was push their suffering onto other people instead.

She- she just couldn't do this anymore.

By the time that she was ready, it was the early morning- if this hour could even be called that instead of just late, late, late night. She wanted to leave before anyone could stop her or question her. This wasn't the plan, but Lup couldn't handle it anymore.

Knowing that something she made was destroying whole cities and armies and causing such devastation was more than she could bear. And talking to the others about it didn't help. They all just tried to distract her, or comfort her with statistics, or remind her of why they needed to do this. That wasn't what she needed. She didn't need to forget her problems, or remember the facts of the situation. She was a woman of both thought and action, and she'd spent enough time thinking. She needed to do something.

The hallways were dark, but that wasn't a problem with her darkvision. If anything, it was an advantage, given that not all of her family members had it. What was a problem was that she was tired, emotionally and physically, and her body kept telling her that it was time to rest, even though it wouldn't let her get any.

There was no real danger, anyway. No one would be suspicious of her wandering the ship. She was planning to leave a note, but she hadn't gotten to it yet, so there was no reason for anyone to suspect anything.

She shook her head, forcing the paranoia to leave her mind. She was perfectly safe. It just felt so strange to be hiding something from her family. It was throwing her off.

Her mind was too busy and tired for her to notice the signs that someone was about to turn a corner in front of her, and she walked right into Lucretia before she could stop herself. The two women nearly went down in a pile of limbs, but just barely caught themselves.

"Lup?" Lucretia asked, sounding uncertain. Lup wasn't sure if that uncertainty came from curiosity about what she was doing up at this time, or if it was just because human eyes sucked at seeing in the dark, and Lucretia was just genuinely unsure who exactly she'd bumped into. She decided to answer as if it were the latter, since she didn't want to answer the former anyway.

"Yeah, it's me, Creesh. Sorry 'bout that."

"Don't be. It's as much my fault as it is yours," Lucretia responded, waving one hand as if to dismiss the apology.

"What are you doing up, babe? You should get some sleep," Lup said, her concern for Lucretia and her desire to get Lucretia to leave so she could go about her business unseen out-weighing the fear that the question would prompt Lucretia to ask the same.

"I couldn't," Lucretia said, softly.

"You have to sleep, Lucy," Lup said, voice softening. "I know it's hard sometimes- but it's so bad for you when you don't."

Lup had learned the side of effects of going without sleep or meditation decades before she even joined this mission, and yet they still haunted her. And for humans, who couldn't get away with using meditation to make up for it, it was even worse. Lup couldn't help but be worried for her human crewmates when they weren't getting enough of it.

"Can I make you something?" Lup offered, turning toward the kitchen. "Grilled cheese?"

It was Lucretia's favorite comfort food, she knew, and she rarely turned it down, so Lup was rather surprised when Lucretia shook her head vehemently at the offer.

"No!" She said, louder than she usually would at night, for fear of waking people up.

Lup leaned back a little, surprised at the outburst.

"Okay! I'm not gonna force feed you," she responded, turning it into a joke, even though the thought had definitely occurred to her before, on bad cycles when Lucretia would get so depressed that she stopped eating and started to get too thin for anybody's comfort. It had always been especially upsetting to her and Taako though, even if they didn't admit it. Even before they'd started to admit that their crew was family.

"Sorry," Lucretia said, voice gone quiet again. "I know you were just trying to help. But it's frustrating. Everyone wants to help but nobody is doing anything. It's just all distractions and rationalizations and shitty goofs around here recently."

Lup slumped in on herself a little at that. She understood what Lucretia meant all too well.

"Gods, I know. It's unbearable," she admitted.

Lucretia's expression changed then, went soft, and she reached out and touched Lup's arm softly.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

Lup meant to assure her that she was. That she could handle this. The crew knew how badly she was doing with this plan, of course, but saying anything risked her own plan. But the quiet of the night and her own tiredness had her shaking her head 'no' instead.

Lucretia hesitated, clearly unsure of what she could do, before she wrapped Lup up in a tight hug. Lup squeezed back, trying to keep herself from crying, because once she started she wasn't going to stop, and she might spill the details on her plans and end up ruining them.

Lucretia was murmuring comfort to her, but Lup heard her let out a sob of her own, and that was what finally broke her.

They just held onto each other for a long time, crying but less miserable for the sake of being in each other's company.

Lup pulled back eventually, but not all the way. She took Lucretia's hand in her to have something to hold on.

"Come on," Lup said, tugging Lucretia toward the kitchen. "It's not gonna fix anything, but food's not gonna hurt."

Lucretia didn't let go as Lup pulled her along, and she didn't protest anymore.

It wasn't easy to cook with only one hand free, but Lup has always been very good at cooking under less than ideal circumstances. And Lucretia kept handing her stuff when she needed it, often without even needing instruction from Lup. And grilled cheese was basic enough that they made it work.

They sat down at the table, and they kept not letting go, nibbling on their sandwiches in comfortable silence.

"It's not just that I'm mad you wouldn't let me do my plan, you know," Lucretia said, quietly. "I'm not that arrogant. I'm just so afraid of what this plan is doing to us. I always have been."

"Yeah. I think we all know that. We just don't want to talk about it, because we haven't been able to find a single plan that won't hurt people. Yours isn't perfect either, you know?" Lup said, automatically tensing up a little at the topic, given the number of arguments it had already caused.

"I know," Lucretia whispered. Her voice got even softer as she said the next part. "But it wouldn't hurt you. Not like this. It wouldn't put our family in danger like this one does. That's such a selfish way to look at it, I know, but if we're going to have to hurt people either way- I wanted to make sure that we never hurt each other."

Lup was left speechless by the words. Lucretia had never told them that in those words before, and she felt a wave of affection and sadness for her friend.

"Oh babe. Baaaabe. Fuck, I had no idea," she said, and squeezed Lucretia's hand in hers.

"Somebody figured out a way to use the Bulwark Staff as a weapon," Lucretia blurted, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. "They- they trap people inside of the shield and bomb them or poison them or bottleneck attack them. I never thought-"

"Lucy," Lup said, choked up on her own emotions. She understood that pain. So well. "Why didn't you tell anybody? We understand- obviously. We want to help you."

"How was I supposed to say that? Even with- this- my device has a smaller death count than any of yours," Lucretia said, and Lup flinched involuntarily. "I didn't want to be- you know, like the person with a sore leg who tells somebody with chronic pain that they know what you're going through when they don't have a clue."

"That's not what telling us that stuff would be," Lup said, voice firm and unwavering. "That would just be- venting to your family. That's what we're here for. Doesn't matter that it's not the same."

Lucretia had started crying too hard to eat her sandwich anymore, so Lup went over to her and squeezed onto the chair she was sitting on, wrapping her arms around her again. And pushing the sandwich away because tear soggy grilled cheese was not on the menu in her kitchen.

Lucretia turned her head to cry into Lup's chest, her body automatically adjusting to Lup's presence on the chair to avoid overbalancing. They were family, after all, comfortable in each other's space even now, when they'd spent weeks circling each other like skittish cats afraid of startling each other.

Lup figured her plans could be put off a little longer. Right now, her family needed her. The world could wait.

#lup adventurezone #lucretia adventurezone #taz balance #lupcretia #kind of? #febuwhump #febuwhumpday6

[comradelup]

@daughterofsarenrae said: Blupjeans + stolen century hurt/comfort!!

this was supposed to be a drabble. it is now 4k words. i went insane on this fine sunday afternoon/evening/night. blupjeans make you lose control.

ao3 link

Twenty seconds ago, Lup hobbled into the medbay, using Taako as a crutch and covered in soot and burns. Barry, who was just trying to find where he left his old body’s skeleton from a previous experiment, was tasked with patching her up while Taako helped Magnus clean up the mess outside.

He helped her onto the examination table to take the weight off her leg, which has some severe burns on it. Both arms are burned too, getting worse closer to her hands. He guesses she did some wandless evocation— or as she likes to call it: “fireball juggling” that went wrong. Too bad she chose to wear shorts and go without her jacket. Her hair is dirty and the tail ends are charred, and her face has soot on it, but it doesn’t look too bad. She doesn’t look too bad, and he’d tell her that if he had a single smooth bone in his body.

“Whoops,” she says with a shrug as Barry grabs the necessary materials needed to clean her up. Stuff to clean off the ashes and dirt, burn cream (that the ship keeps an ample amount of specifically for Lup Disasters™), and gauze to put over the cream. Merle’s out on some excursion with Lucretia and Davenport, so it’ll be at least a few days before he comes back to heal her magically. Honestly, Lucretia and Davenport’s absence explains the accident, they’re the most responsible ones.

“W-what happened?” Barry asks, wetting a washcloth and starting to scrub her upper arm.

“Accidental explosion, happens to the best of us.”

“W-with you around maybe,” Barry says, causing Lup to scoff indignantly.

“Rude!” she declares, “I am the best evocationist ever. It’s not my fault the dirt on this stink planet is explosive.”

Barry chuckles as he finishes wiping down her upper arm. Making his touch lighter he moves on to her forearm, and he doesn’t notice he’s gone quiet as he focuses.

“Aw, you’re so considerate,” Lup teases. Barry grins sheepishly and shrugs.

“I don’t w-w-wanna hurt you, is all.”

Lup makes a small sound that sounds between an exhale and a chuckle. “Thanks, babe.” Her voice suddenly sounds a lot more sincere.

He looks up and she’s smiling down at him. He nearly loses his breath, and manages to say, “No problem.”

He goes back to his work to avoid combusting completely. Lup says, “It’s funny, actually, how all this happened. When the explosion happened my wand just disappeared. It was behind my ear and went who-knows-where. I told Taako to get it for me but I don’t know how long it’ll take him.”

“I can help him after we’re done, if he wants help.”

“Don’t stress it babe, Mags is helping him. You can go back to your bones or whatever.”

Barry chuckles, finally cleaning up the arm. He moves to the next one and Lup stretches the clean one out, almost instantly wincing. She brings it back to her side and says, “Nope, stretching severely burned skin is a bad idea. The more you know.”

Barry chuckles again. “Just try to stay still until I get the cream on. It’ll help with dry skin too.”

“Me, sitting still? Have you met me, Barold?” she says, making him laugh a little. Nonetheless, after shuffling a little to get comfortable, she sits still. Her unburned leg bounces against the rung of the table, though.

A small lapse of silence fills the air between them, and Barry can’t quite tell if it’s awkward or comfortable or something else. He focuses on her arm either way, carefully wiping soot off the tips of her fingers before washing out the cloth in the sink.

He brings it back and starts wiping the side of her face clean. She was watching his hands before, but now she’s watching his face. His hand stills as they make eye contact. The silence is definitely something else now, but he can’t tell what it is. After a moment of silent staring, he brakes contact and goes back to cleaning, now feeling more than a little awkward. He’s intently focusing on Lup temple, so he can’t see her expression, but out of the corner of his eye, she looks a little… disappointed?

“What do you need your old skeleton for?” she asks suddenly. It takes him by surprise.

“Oh, uh, I was going to do some tests and needed b-b… I needed b-bones that weren’t, you know, still in a body. I thought I left some in here.” He adds, “You guys think it’s weird that I keep my old bodies, but it keeps me from experimenting on myself.”

Lup laughs a little. “I don’t think it’s weird.”

Barry backs away from her now-clean face. She was looking away from him, at the far wall, but looks back once there’s more distance between them. He asks, “Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, it is weird, but it makes sense, especially once you put it like that.”

He smiles before moving to her legs. Her right one is burned worse than her left, so he starts with the left. He pulls a wheely chair over to sit in and she props her foot on his thigh. Starting at the ankle, he says, “It’s not w-weird the more you think about it. It’s just recycling.”

Lup laughs at that, covering her mouth with her hand. Barry laughs along as he cleans. Lup says, “Can’t argue with that logic!”

“Tell that to Taako. He called me a… w-wh-what was it… a ‘total v-vulture’ when I tried explaining it to him.”

Lup laughs again, a little more calmed down. “Don’t worry babe, I’ll beat him up if he bullies you any more.”

Barry smiles, half to himself. “Thanks.” He finishes working on her calf and moves up to her knee.

Lup says, “Y’know, if you give me another rag I can help you with that.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that. I got it,” Barry says, shaking his head a little.

Lup shrugs, “If you insist.” She leans back, arms propper her up before she winces and remembers the burns.

“W-wait. Here,” Barry says, stopping and putting down his cloth. Lup moves her foot off him and he stands, grabbing the burn cream off the table next to her. Opening it and squeezing a little bit into his hand he says, “I’ll reapply and b-b-b… wrap it later, but this should help in the meantime.”

He rubs the stuff between his palms and when she offers a hand he takes it. He rubs both his hands around hers to spread the stuff over her burns. He’s careful not to hurt her and he stares hard at her hand to avoid making eye contact. He can tell his face is red enough.

Once it’s all rubbed in he just simply holds her hand in one of his and asks, “Okay, how’s that?”

He dares to look up at her and she’s looking at him silently, mouth ajar and what looks like a blush on her face. That could be his imagination though. She looks away and says, “Yeah! Yeah, it’s fine. Great, actually. Feels a lot better.”

“Oh, good. I’ll do the, uh, the other one, then.” Lup just nods, and Barry repeats the process with her other hand. It’s almost like a lotion, it moisturizes the skin as well as healing it. Barry’s hands come away soft as a baby’s skin. He thinks about that more than the softness of her hand despite the injury.

They fall into silence again as Barry sits back down and moves on to cleaning her other leg. Barry tries not to think about both him and Lup blushing as he held her hand, because if he thinks about it he’ll think too much about it and that’ll get him nowhere. Gods know he’s done that too many times already, especially when Lup is concerned.

Any chance of avoiding awkward talk is thrown out the window when Lup winces and buckles forward, gritting her teeth as Barry accidentally presses too hard into her burned thigh. He moves his hands away from her leg as if she stung him, instantly blurting out apologies.

“I’m sorry, I w-w-wasn’t thinking. That was v-very stupid of me. Sorry.”

Lup holds up a hand. “No. Don’t. It’s fine. I wasn’t paying attention either.” She sucks in a breath and lets it out slowly, relaxing her muscles as she does so. She leans back and smiles sheepishly. “That just stung a lot.”

“Sorry,” Barry says again.

“Don’t be,” Lup insists, “You obviously didn’t do it on purpose.”

Barry nods. She offers her leg again, and he lets her prop her foot on his leg as he goes back to work, now acutely aware of her pressure sensitivity. He spares a glance at her and she’s fiddling with her hands in her lap. They’re slowly and softly trailing over each other; she interlaces her fingers, holding her own hand.

It’s been a while now and Barry is realizing the mood has changed from the time when she got here. A lot quieter, softer, a little more intimate. Or maybe the injury made Lup too tired to be as talkative as she usually is. Maybe the something hanging in the air between them, so heavy he can almost physically feel it, is all in Barry’s imagination.

“I wonder what’s taking the boys so long,” Lup says, “Kinda worried about my wand.”

“I guess how fast they’ll find it depends on how big the explosion is,” Barry says, “B-b-but we always have backups if they can’t find it.”

Lup makes an agreeing sound. “But I like my wand, it’s a good one.”

“I get that,” Barry says.

“Says the one who made a wand out of his ulna.”

“Says the one who set fire to gunpowder dirt.”

“Says the one who wore a jeans tank top. A jank jop.”

“Says the one who told me to w-wear it.”

“Says the two flirting by insulting each other.”

Barry and Lup’s heads turn in sync to Taako, who’s sauntering in with two small bits of something in his hand. Lup, defensive, says, “We weren’t—!”

“Yes you were, shut up,” Taako says. Barry says nothing and tries to keep his face from turning red at the assumption. Taako reaches Lup and hands her the sticks. “Here.”

She takes them and, yep, they’re the two halves of Lup’s broken wand. She frowns and pouts a little and says, “Aww, my good wand.”

“Don’t mess around with the stinky dirt, goofus,” Taako says, “How’re the burns?”

“They’re getting better,” Lup says, putting the wand pieces down next to her. “Once we get all the junk off me and the burn cream on me I’ll be fine.”

Taako hums. “We’ll get you a new wand after that’s done. Then you can help us look for Magnus’ granddad’s knife. He’ll cry if we can’t find it.”

Lup nods and Taako turns to Barry. “Speed up on the ‘fixing my twin’ thing,” he says, poking Barry in the nose before turning and leaving.

“But I don’t want a new wand,” Lup grumbles, crossing her arms. It’s dramatic and mostly for goofs, but he can tell she’s actually a little upset.

“You know… I’m p-pretty sure I still have my other ulna.”

Lup makes eye contact with him, a beat passes, and they both dissolve into laughter.

“You’re so weird, Bluejeans,” Lup says, leaning against the wall and crossing her arms. “I dig it.”

Barry chuckles a little more as he calms down. “Thanks… I guess?”

Luckily, all the soot is finally off of Lup. He stands, takes out the burn cream again, and says, “Give me your arm.”

She sticks it out and he squeezes it from the bottle directly onto her forearm. He starts working it over her whole arm and she sighs in relief. “That feels so good. I was feeling like I got sunburnt all over.”

Barry’s nervous again, remembering the atmosphere from the last time he did this. He says, “You kinda w-w-were.”

Lup chuckles at that and says, “Yeah, I guess so.”

The burn isn’t too bad beyond her elbow, but he spreads the extra cream up there just in case. He wipes his hands on his jeans and grabs the gauze next. He starts wrapping her palm and she suddenly winces, hand tensing. Barry freezes, mortified that he hurt her. “Oh, sorry. W-was that too tight?”

She nods, grimacing. “A little.”

He unwraps and rewraps it, careful to be a little looser. His face burns with embarrassment. This is the second time he’s hurt her, oh he sucks at this. He continues wrapping the gauze around her hand in a repetitive motion, willing himself to focus on doing it right.

Something must’ve shown on his face, because Lup places her free hand over his, stilling it. “Hey.” He looks up and meets her eyes and she’s smiling sympathetically. “Don’t worry about it, I’m fine. I’m tough, y’know?” Her smile turns teasing and she says, “You couldn’t hurt me if you wanted to.”

That’s not true, because he didn’t want to hurt her and he still did, but he smiles a little regardless. She’s trying to cheer him up and he appreciates it. They hang suspended in that moment for a beat, just smiling at each other. That’s the second time this has happened too. He goes back to wrapping her hand and says, “I think even if I did hurt you Taako w-w-would hurt me just as bad.”

Lup chuckles, though it sounds a little empty. Weird. “Yeah, he’s real weird about that sometimes. Like, I can take care of myself, dingus! No need to go into ‘protective twin’ mode.”

Barry hums, nodding. He finishes wrapping the gauze and tucks the end of it into the folds so it’ll stay closed. He takes his hands off hers and she holds it out. The fingers are free but the palm is covered. It also reaches halfway up her forearm, where the burns were the worst. She wiggles her fingers a bit and turns her hand around to inspect both the front and back of the wrapping.

“Sweet, now I got a bitchin’ cast.”

Barry laughs a little. “If you w-want to think of it that way.”

“I do,” Lup says, smiling proudly. She sticks her other hand out and says, “Let’s do part two.”

Barry nods, getting the burn cream and starting to lather it onto her other arm. Lup says, “Do you think I’ll need to mummify my leg?”

Barry shakes his head. “It’s not as b-bad as your hands. Just put the cream on and reapply every so often until it’s healed. The gauze is really just to keep the stuff from rubbing off of your hands as you touch stuff.”

“Cool,” Lup says, “Though it’d be a nice early Halloween costume.”

“Yeah, if this planet does Halloween.”

“Fair. Hey, remember that cycle where Halloween was a monthly thing?”

“Oh yeah. April Halloween was w-weird to experience.”

“But really fun. I think me and Taako did the matching costume that month.”

“Right. You w-were Mario and Luigi right?”

“Yeah.” Lup laughs. “I was a great plumber.”

“I remember that. You made Magnus be P-peach.”

“No, he wanted to be Peach. He rocked that dress.”

Barry nods in agreement. Her other hand is just about done. It’s quicker work after doing it once before. He tucks the end of the gauze away and starts to put the roll back in its little box. He stands and pushes the stool out of the way. “There, you’re done.”

“Nice,” Lup says, holding out her hands and admiring them. Her casual smile turns reminiscent. “Y’know, whenever Taako or I got hurt on the road we always used to patch each other up and I always insisted we had to kiss it better. We had an aunt that told us it was healing magic when we were real little and it stuck with me.”

The image of Barry kissing Lup’s hand enters his mind and stubbornly refuses to leave. He stutters out an “Oh, really?”

Lup nods. “Yeah.” She smirks mischievously and holds out her hand like a queen to her subject. “Try it.”

Oh! She’s trying to kill him. That’s fine. This is fine. His face is probably as red as his robe and judging by Lup’s grin she thinks this is hilarious. Whatever. Fuck it. Let’s go all in. He gently takes both of her hands, holds them together, and presses a kiss to the junction between them.

When he lifts his head he stares at her hands in his, unable to make eye contact. Why the fuck did he just do that? Is he insane? She’s gonna think he’s insane, or laugh it off. He doesn’t know which is worse.

Biting the proverbial bullet, he lifts his head and looks at her. She’s staring at him again like before, eyes filled with determination and another unreadable emotion. She lifts her hands out of his grasp. Of course. This was weird and she thinks he’s weird and he should just leave before—

She’s kissing him. On the lips this time. Her hands moved to either side of his face and pulled him in, his hands falling to her knees on instinct. Oh. Wow. He kisses back, eyes falling closed. After too short a time, Lup breaks the kiss and leans back, staring at him with that determined something in her eyes still.

Then it melts away and she’s avoiding his gaze. “Um.”

“Um,” Barry parrots. He doesn’t know what to say either. His hands are still on her knees. Her hands are held near her chest, fingers curled into loose, nervous fists.

She looks to him again and opens her mouth to say something, but a loud voice interrupts her.

“Hey guys! Look what I found!” Magnus says as he enters, proudly brandishing his knife. On instinct, Barry backs up. Magnus notices his and Lup’s expressions and, with confusion, asks, “Am I interrupting something?”

“Uh, you found your knife? Where was it?” Lup says rather than answer the question. Barry sees a bit of darkness to her cheeks but says nothing. He’s probably blushing so hard he looks like a stop sign.

“Stuck in a tree,” Magnus says, laughing a little. “And not like in the branches or anything. It looked like someone threw it into a tree.”

Lup forces a small laugh of her own. “That’s wild, dude.”

“Isn’t it!? But uh, I just wanted to tell you guys so you didn’t worry. Bye!” And he’s gone as quickly as he left.

With the atmosphere thoroughly shattered, Barry and Lup look at each other awkwardly. “Um,” they say in unison, then laugh a little at that.

“Uh, here,” Barry says, grabbing the bottle of burn cream and handing it to her. “For your leg. And your, uh, your fingers.”

“Thanks,” Lup says. When she takes it their fingers brush and they both pretend to not notice it. She slips down from the table and starts making for the door, but walking slowly and backward. “I’ll uh, give this back when I’m done.”

“Mm-hm. You should reapply in uh, a few hours,” Barry says.

“Okay. Cool.” Lup nods. Then she… waves? And Barry waves back? “Bye,” Lup says, then bumps into the wall by the door, smiles sheepishly, and disappears down the hall. The door automatically slides shut behind her.

Barry sighs heavily, leaning against the table. What the fuck was that? He just kissed her. He kissed Lup. The woman he’s been practically in love with for decades now. And they just ignored it. Or they’re avoiding it? Which should he be hoping for? Should he go after her and talk about it? Would that be weird? Or would pretending it didn’t happen be weirder?

Fuck. He needs to get himself together. He looks down and realizes he’s been throttling this washcloth like it owes him money. Okay. Okay. Step one: clean the medbay. Step two: go to your room and scream into a pillow until you know you’ll be able to look Lup in the eye. Her warm, brown, soft eyes that look right into Barry’s soul and—

Focus!

He cleans the medbay, putting away the materials and wiping down the exam table, just in case. Also to get his nerves out. He almost trips over the rolling chair twice so it doesn’t help much. But he notices something: Lup’s old wand, still in two pieces and still on the table. She’ll want that back.

Fuck, he’s gonna beat himself up if he doesn’t do this, huh?

Telling himself it’s just to give her property back and for no other reason, Barry makes his way down to the hall of sleeping quarters to where Lup’s room is.

He knocks on the door and it slides open, but Barry is instead face to face with Taako. He looks as surprised to see Barry as Barry is seeing Taako. But Taako’s face morphs into a grin and he says, “Hey, Barold. What’s up?”

“Lup forgot her w-w… her wand,” Barry manages, holding out the halves for Taako to take.

Taako does that thing where he pretends to think on a matter even though he’s made up his mind. He taps a finger to his chin and hums. Then he points that finger at Barry and says, “Why don’t you give it to her.” He winks, he fucking winks, then moves past him and into his own room.

Barry turns back to looking through Lup’s doorway at Lup herself. She looks like she’s been pacing. She does that when she’s nervous. Is she as stressed over this as Barry?

“Um, here’s your w-wand,” he says, holding it out to her. He’s still standing in the doorway. She crosses the room to take it from him, but she seems more focused on him. Their hands brushing is an afterthought.

“Thanks,” she says. While still keeping that eye contact, Lup places her broken wand on the dresser by the door. The third time they keep staring at each other. This time, he doesn’t break it.

“Barry?” she asks.

“Yes?”

“I, uh,” She breaks eye contact this time, nervously looking down before meeting his gaze again. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask permission before I kissed you.”

That takes him by surprise. “W-w-what?”

“I’m sorry, I kissed you without knowing if you would be cool with it. I mean, you kissed back so that probably means you were? But still, I’m not too sure and either way I shouldn’t have assumed anything that was rude of me and I—”

“Lup?”

She freezes. “Yes?”

“Can I kiss you?”

“…Yes.”

So he does. He steps forward, officially crossing the threshold of her room and meeting her lips with his. Her hands find his face again and— right, she still has bandages on. His own hands fall to her hips. Her shirt is a little rumpled and riding up so he touches bare skin and it’s soft. So is the kiss, it’s soft and warm and perfect, just like Lup. This kiss is longer, less impulsive, more gravitational. They came crashing into each other and Barry’s heart exploded into a million tiny pieces.

But it ends, sadly, and Lup backs up just enough to look him in the eyes. “I’ve wanted to do that for such a long time.”

“Me too.”

“I never imagined having mummy hands when we did it though,” Lup says, giggling. Barry does too.

“I really don’t mind.”

“I do. I can barely feel your dumb, cute face.” She prods his cheeks with just the tips of her fingers for emphasis.

Barry moves a hand to cup her cheek. “Your face is cute too.”

She leans into the touch, her hand over his own. “Thanks.”

“Kinda wanna kiss it again, if I’m being honest.” Gods, it feels so good to be honest about this now.

“I wouldn’t mind that at all,” she says, moving steadily closer.

Barry moves closer too. Gravitational. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They meet in the middle for another kiss. Barry feels like a shooting star and a firework and a blooming flower, but more importantly: he feels Lup. Her fingers on his face, her hips under his hands, her lips on his, her breath mixed with his.

It’s nothing short of heaven.

#taz #taz balance #the adventure zone #taz fic #blupjeans #balance #lup #barry #i. for one. love and appriciate barry's totally canonical stutter that he 100% has in canon #txt #writing #prompt #i didn't post the og ask because it's easier to post it like this sorry lol #ANYWAY. i stayed up late for this even though i have school tomorrow #i'm going to bed now. goodnight <3